The Interesting Thing About Circles
by I Took the One Less Travelled
Summary: In which Emma was accidentally kidnapped by John Winchester, and her big brothers tend to cause a bit of a ruckus when they visit Storybrooke (just like when they visit everywhere else). AU post S08E11: LARP and the Real Girl, Supernatural, post S02E09: Queen of Hearts, Once Upon a Time. Language is a bit iffy, so if it bothers you tell me and I'll bump the rating up but T for now.
1. Clip Show

**Creston, Iowa (Pre-series, Supernatural, Once Upon a Time)**

Emma had no idea what was going on, but it sure as hell wasn't normal. Emma had found that graveyards were a reliably abandoned, deserted place for her to have some downtime without people, and her foster families rarely seemed to care where she had gone. But tonight she had headed to a different graveyard than normal, leery of the cops that had nearly caught her trespassing at her usual spot.

She hadn't expected the man to be there. He was middle-aged and intimidating, dressed in shabby, heavy layers, worn jeans and work boots. Then there was the fact that he was digging up a grave. Emma blinked at him incredulously.

The man spotted her approaching and sighed in irritation. "Hey, kid, get out here!" He ordered.

"What are you doing?" Emma demanded instead of leaving.

"Something important," the man said. "Now go away."

"It looks like you're digging up that grave," Emma observed. "That isn't very nice."

"I have to get something inside," the man said. "It might be dangerous, which is why you should leave."

"My name's Emma. What's yours?" The man sighed in irritation as she came closer, but Emma was used to adults being annoyed by her, and was unfazed.

"John. Now go home, and stay away from graveyards at night—they're dangerous."

Emma snorted loudly. "I hang out in graveyards at night all the time, and nothing's ever happened to me," she objected. "Unless _you're_ planning to do something to me."

John glared viciously at her, but seemed to accept that she wasn't planning on going away anytime soon. Instead, he hoisted his shovel again, and got back to digging at the grave. Emma had nothing better to do, and this man was interesting, so she flopped down in the grass next to the grave and leaned back on her hands.

"So what's in that grave that you need?" Emma asked. "Did you know… Jennifer Wilson? Oh, she died sixty years ago," she said, looking at the gravestone. "Are you related to her, or something?"

John snorted. "Or something," he said. "Look, kid, if you're not going to go away, grab the damn spare shovel and make yourself useful. Better than Dean, since he thinks I don't know he's using his fake id to buy booze. As long as he doesn't let Sammy have a damn drop."

Emma decided that it couldn't hurt, and helped herself to the shovel in the pile of supplies on a tarp to the side. "Who's Dean? And Sammy?"

"Dean and Sam. My sons. Dean is seventeen, and Sam's about your age, I'd guess."

"I'm twelve." She'd just turned twelve last month, in fact—she was very proud of the milestone.

"Sam is thirteen."

Emma forked the tip of the shovel into the dirt as hard as she could, and tried an experimental scooping motion, pleased when it picked up a fair amount of dirt. She tossed it to the side weakly, and John laughed at her attempt to get it into his pile.

"Careful," he ordered roughly, grabbing her shoulders in both hands to correct her posture. "You could hurt your back. Lift with your legs and core, not your upper body."

It had been so long since someone had touched her with such casual affection that Emma just barely stopped herself from freezing on the spot to contemplate it. Obviously her foster family didn't offer her hugs or squeezes, and she moved around so much lately that she'd given up on making friends with her peers at school.

Instead, she did as he said. It worked a little bit, but was still difficult. She probably wasn't being much help, but he didn't take the shovel or try to send her away, just passed the time by talking about his sons. In turn, Emma babbled about school to fill the silence when he trailed off.

She wasn't sure what a man with a family was doing digging up a grave at ten o'clock at night, but he was interesting and he was talking to her.

Then the breeze picked up, and John started swearing. "She's here."

"Who?" Emma demanded, shivering against the sudden cold.

He gestured to the gravestone. "Jennifer Wilson. Look, just get down, okay?" He started digging faster, and reached into his coat to yank out a handgun.

Then the air combined around itself, forming a misty sort of figure that roared menacingly and swooped at John's head. Emma screamed and dove behind the gravestone, and John fired the gun straight at it. It let out a loud, agonized sound and disappeared, only to reappear on the other side of him. Without missing a beat, John spun and shot it again.

"Kid, get out here and dig, I've only got a couple of minutes before she comes back!" John ordered. Emma considered bolting, or hiding some more. But if he was trying to get rid of… whatever that thing was—was it a ghost? He had said Jennifer Wilson, so maybe it _was_ a ghost—then she wanted to help him.

Instead, she hurled herself back at the grave and picked up her shovel again, forcing her exhausted, burning upper-arms to continue to shovel dirt. Then John's shovel hit something hard and hollow with a dull thud, and he jumped down into the hole to force the dirt off the coffin. Emma pointed the flashlight at the coffin carefully, uneasy. Was she about to see bones? A dead body?

He smashed the fastening and lifted the coffin open, and the air started to get colder again. John swore loudly. Then he tossed his gun to the side of the grave. Emma yelped in surprise.

"Take the gun, kid, and shoot the spirit!" He ordered.

"But—" Emma protested.

"It's loaded with rock salt, it won't hurt anyone except the ghost. Now shoot it!" Emma picked up the gun, pointed it at the forming white mist, and pulled the trigger with her eyes squeezed shut. She screamed as it let out a loud banging noise, and the force nearly sent her tumbling off her feet.

"Now get the salt and the can of kerosene!" John ordered. Emma dove for the tarp where all of his supplies were sitting, and found a container of salt and a gas can. "Dump them! Over the bones, Emma, _now!"_

Emma did as instructed, too overwhelmed by the circumstances to think anything through. Then John was hauling himself out of the grave, yanking the gun from her hand in order to shoot the reappearing spirit one more time, and dropping a lit match into the hole. Emma stared as the ghost went up in flames before her eyes.

"You alright, kid?" John asked roughly.

"I- I think so," Emma said. "That was a ghost, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," John sighed.

"Do ghosts try to kill people? Are there lots of them?"

"Emma, kid, you don't want to know. Go home, okay?"

Emma glared at him. She did not intend to allow this man to leave until he had told her everything that she needed to know about defending herself from ghosts. If there were murderous spirits running around, she wanted to know how to handle them.

So she followed him as he gathered up all of his supplies and headed towards a sleek, black classic car parked by the curb. She stared in awe as he hoisted the trunk open, shoved up a false bottom and revealed a pile of weaponry dangling from the roof of the trunk.

"Can I give you a ride home, kid?" He offered, sighing heavily.

"I don't want to go home," Emma snapped. "And they don't want me there, anyway. What if the ghost comes back?"

"We killed it. Salt and burn the bones, and the spirit has nothing on this plane to cling to. That's how it works."

"What if it had friends?"

"Vengeful spirits don't have friends, Emma. They don't have real emotion. The bits of them that used to be a person slowly slip away as they slide into a killing rage and destroy everyone that reminds them of the person that killed them."

"Still," Emma protested.

"Your parents aren't expecting you home?" John asked warily.

"My parents abandoned me on the side of a highway in Maine when I was a baby. My foster parents don't care when I come and go, as long as I don't cause trouble, cost too much money or make too much noise. I want to learn how to kill ghosts," she snapped obstinately.

"Emma. Hunting is dangerous."

"Hunting, huh? That's what you do—look for ghosts and kill them?"

"More than just ghosts. But yes. That's what I do."

"Well, you could teach me," she said hopefully. Finally, she had been doing something that felt real, the blood pumping in her veins and the feeling of the recoil from the gun nearly hurling her to the ground.

"I told you, hunting is dangerous."

"More or less dangerous than not knowing how to fight the monsters?" Emma asked.

"Get in the damn car," John snapped. "You can stay in my motel room tonight, and I'll give you some pointers on how to keep yourself safe in the morning. You are not going to _hunt_, am I making myself clear? I'll just teach you how to defend yourself."

Emma happily slipped into the front seat of the car. Her foster parents never let her sit in the front, but John didn't say a word against it. "I like your car," she decided, settling against the smooth, worn leather.

John cracked a grin as he started the rumbling engine. "Beauty, isn't she? '67 Chevy Impala. Practically good as new. When the boys are old enough that they can hunt on their own, I'll give the car to Dean and get myself a truck."

The motel that John pulled up at was trashy, badly lit and practically deserted. He led the way up the stairs to a room with two beds. One of the beds had a young teenage boy on it, watching TV. "Hey, Dad," the boy—it must've been Sam—called.

"Son. Your brother back yet?"

"Nope," Sam said cheerfully. "He might not be, said he was gonna try to pick someone up."

John sighed and rolled his eyes, muttering about pretty children that took after their mother, and sluts that didn't think that their families knew that they slept with anything that moved. "Sam, this is Emma."

"Dad, did you kidnap a girl?" Sam asked, sounding exasperated. He was the floppy kind of attractive, and Emma blushed slightly. He was kind of tall and lanky, dressed in worn jeans and a hoodie.

"More like she stowed away," John said grumpily, pushing her into the room gently. "Ran into her when I was burning the bones. She helped me dig up the grave and then she wouldn't leave. I promised I'd teach her how to take care of herself against monsters tomorrow."

"Where's she gonna sleep?" Sam asked dubiously.

"With you," John said. "If your damn brother wanders in, he can sleep on the floor."

"Um, Dad, she's a _girl_." Sam had gone nearly as red as Emma had been moments earlier.

John rolled his eyes and stomped towards the bed, grabbing a few pillows from the top shelf of the closet along the way. Then he carefully propped the pillows down the middle of the bed.

"Good enough for you, Sam?"

"Yep!" Sam's voice had gone kind of high.

"Hi," Emma said hesitantly.

"Hi," Sam replied. "I'm Sam Winchester."

"Emma Swan."

"Do you like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?"

"I don't usually get to watch TV," Emma said hesitantly. "My foster parents say that it makes too much noise."

Sam made a pained, sympathetic sound. "Come on, they're awesome." He budged over more firmly on his side of the bed, and patted the vacant spot. They watched in silence for a bit. "You doing anything for Thanksgiving?"

"Nah," Emma said. "I mean, my foster parents usually have a bunch of people over, but I always stay in my room, because I don't know anyone and I feel awkward."

"Oh," Sam said. "Me too. I mean, we're staying here till Dad finds another hunt, I'm starting school next Tuesday."

Emma grinned excitedly. "At West?"

"Yeah," Sam smiled shyly.

"I go there! I'm in grade 7."

"Grade 8," Sam said.

"I can show you around, if you want," Emma offered.

"Yeah, I'd like that."

John snorted by the desk on the other side of the beds. Emma glanced up and realized that he was had disassembled several guns on the surface, and was cleaning them out with some kind of heavy oil. "Lord save me from the awkwardness of teenagers," he said. "You guys are friends now, okay? That means you eat lunch together and hang out after school together, and go to each other's places on the weekends."

Sam went red. "I know how to make friends, Dad."

"Right," John snorted. "Clearly, Sammy, you don't need any help in that department."

…

"Dad, when did we get an extra kid?" The husky voice pulled Emma from her surprisingly restful sleep and into the morning sunlight streaming through the curtains.

"Morning, Dean," Sam called. He was on the bed next to Emma. The line of pillows between them had been shoved aside during the night, but Sam wasn't really in her space. They were facing opposite sides of the bed, and Emma rolled over and shoved the blankets off. She had slept fine in her jeans, even though she had thought that she wouldn't.

Dean was _really_ cute. Like, Nick Carter cute. Emma blushed red as he appraised her with an arched eyebrow.

"Dean, how much did you drink last night?" John demanded from the other bed.

Dean rolled his eyes and threw himself into the desk chair. "Not a lot," he drawled. "Met someone."

"Someone who knew that you're underage?"

"Nope!" Dean said cheerfully. "Never gonna see him again, anyway, so what does it matter?"

John rolled his eyes.

"Seriously, where'd you get the kid?"

"She helped me with a salt and burn last night," John snapped. "While you were out getting wasted and laid. I'm going to teach her about hunting so that she doesn't get herself killed."

"Kind of counter-intuitive, Dad," Sam pointed out, rolling out of bed and padding towards the bathroom. "Since, last I checked, hunting gets people killed all the time."

Dean leaned forward on his knees, studied her intensively, and Emma shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.

"Bet she's scrappy," he determined. "Can probably teach her a thing or two about salt lines and monsters."

**Creston, Iowa (Pre-series, Supernatural, Once Upon a Time)**

"For the love of God, Sam, hit the girl!" John snarled.

"But—" Emma took the opportunity to slam her fist into Sam's solar plexus. It was only recently that John had ruled her proficient enough in their little after-school sparring sessions to fight one-on-one with Sam. He was bigger than her, taller and stronger, but Emma was determined to prove that she could handle him.

The fact that Sam seemed to have difficulty hitting her only worked to her advantage.

They dusted off and separated. "Sam, sometimes monsters look like little girls. Or kids, or harmless bunny rabbits," Dean said, yanking Emma off the ground when she nearly tripped over her own feet. The Winchester brand of affection was rough, but Emma had gotten used to it. It was good to have a friend at school again, even though she knew that either she, or they would be leaving soon. In fact, judging by her foster parents' decreased patience with her existence, she'd probably be shipped off within a month.

"I _know_, Dean, I just don't want to hit Emma," Sam bitched.

Dean had definitely expanded Emma's vocabulary, and she wasn't shy about using it.

"She doesn't seem to have a problem hitting you," John pointed out wryly, where he was standing to one side. "Again."

"Why are you being so insane, Dad?" Sam demanded.

John sighed. "Bobby called me—he's got a hunt that I should go check out in North Carolina. We're going to have to hit the road soon."

He eyed Emma with sadness and affection. "Just making sure that my girl can take care of herself after we go."

Her stomach sunk. Emma didn't _want_ them to go, and since her foster family was losing interest rapidly, chances were that once she moved as well, they wouldn't even be able to find her later on.

"Why can't she just come with us?" Dean asked, crossing his arms.

"Dean, that's kidnapping," John pointed out. "Honestly, I'd like nothing more, but we can't really just—"

"I don't trust that family with her, Dad," Dean argued. Emma's heart warmed that Dean seemed so adamant that she should come. "They barely even notice that she exists. I doubt they'd care if she disappeared, and even if they did report her missing, the state would stop looking for her after only a little bit. She's a foster kid—they never care about runaways."

John hedged for a moment. "Hunting is dangerous," he pointed out. "I haven't been teaching her to hunt, just to defend herself if a threat happened her way."

"Dad," Dean said.

John shifted. "Fine. We'll leave tonight, then. If you want to come, Emma?"

Emma stared, sure that it was too good to be true. All her life, Emma had just wanted a family who _wanted _her around like her biological parents obviously didn't.

"Yeah," Emma agreed.

"Good. Head home, come back at nine with all of your crap," John instructed.

Emma grinned. And that night, she was on the road to North Carolina with her new family.

**Three Years Later: Chicago, Illinois (Pre-series, Supernatural, Once Upon a Time)**

"Her leg's broken for sure," Dean snapped, trying to hold Emma steady as he helped her to the backseat of the Impala. Sam ducked under her other arm. Emma, for her part, leaned her weight on her older brothers and tried not to scream. She was only partly successful—she couldn't stop the steady whimpering noise that was streaming from her lips.

"Right," John ordered, hurling himself into the front seat. "One of you sit in the back and let her lean against you. Emma, try to keep that leg still."

The brothers split, Sam heading to the other side and opening the far back door. He crawled onto the seat inside. "If she scoots towards me backwards, then I'll sit and brace her," he suggested. "Dean, help her in from that side."

Dean seemed to like that idea. Emma just took a deep breath and tried not to pass out under the sudden pain of her leg jostling as Dean lifted her by the other thigh and propped her backwards. Then Sam grabbed her by the upper body and pulled her across the seat. Emma nearly shrieked in pain. Sam twisted so that she could rest against the more stable prop of his chest. Then Dean got into the front seat, and John hit the gas.

He was trying to drive gently, but he couldn't avoid jostling her entirely, and keeping that in mind, John had obviously decided that speed was the most important factor here. They pulled into a hospital after the most agonizing ten minutes of Emma's life, and Dean and Sam helped her out of the car and into the emergency bay.

She was thankfully still on state-assisted healthcare, thanks to being in the foster care system, and they had her name in the computer and everything. One less issue to worry about, which was positive given how many worrisome issues were around. Emma had been injured hunting before—various scrapes and bruises, whiplash from gun recoil. But she had been doing well. She'd belonged, and she'd helped people.

It was only once they had her all put in a cast and her own bed in the corner of a hospital room when they faced the facts. Emma was going to take months, possibly even a year to recover, and John _couldn't_ stay in one place for that long. He couldn't be employed, and they were _hunters_.

"You have to go," Emma said.

"Emma," Dean protested.

"No, you guys _have_ to go. I'm still only fifteen, they'll let me back in the system. They'll pay for my physio."

"Emma," Sam this time.

"No, Sam, she's right," John sighed heavily. "Besides. This time was a broken leg, what if next time is worse? You've been saying it for years—people die when they're hunting."

"You didn't seem to care before," Dean snapped.

"If we're still here when the social workers get here, I'll get arrested for kidnapping," John snapped. "Possibly you too, since you're an adult."

"But _Dad_," Sam begged. "We can't just leave her."

"We're not just _leaving her_, Sam. We're leaving her to be safe. Leaving her to get better, and to have a proper life. She's a good hunter, but she isn't a Winchester, and that's a good thing."

Emma sucked in a breath. It hurt. It ripped her gut out. John was the closest thing to a father that she'd ever had, and he was leaving. It didn't sound like he was planning on coming back, either. For his part, John didn't look too happy about it.

He stepped to her side and kissed her roughly on the forehead. "Emma. Take care of yourself, okay? You." He placed his hands on her shoulders, squeezed. "You _are_ my daughter, alright. In every way that matters."

"Yeah." Emma blinked hard and swallowed down the lump in her throat. The last thing that this situation needed was tears.

"You're better off. Promise me that you'll be careful. Salt lines and devil's traps. Don't go looking for trouble on your own."

"I promise," Emma agreed.

Dean roughly pulled her upper body into his arms. "Bye, baby sister."

"Yeah, bye," Sam added, hugging her himself. "It's nice to not have to be the baby anymore."

"Oh, please," Dean said. "You're a giant baby, Sammy."

"Dean," Emma snapped. "Be nice, or I might just have to reveal what I saw when I walked in on you and that girl last year. What was her name? Ronnie? Dawn? Oh, _Rhonda_, that's right. Rhonda Hurley, wasn't it?"

Dean went so red, it was lucky that he didn't pass out from sudden loss of blood in his limbs.

Not that Emma wanted to discuss what she'd seen. _At all_. She'd known that Dean was equal opportunity as far as genders went, and she'd known that he liked to be a bit submissive every now and again, but knowing _that_—it was too far. As it was, the way that the Winchester family lived in each other's pockets, she probably had more knowledge of various sex kinks that most fifteen year old girls did.

**July 19****th****, 2006: Jefferson City, Missouri (S02E01: In My Time of Dying: Supernatural, Pre-series, Once Upon a Time)**

"Boys," John's hands pressed into his sons shoulders. "If you ever see Emma again, you make sure that she stays away from this, alright? Stays away from you."

"But Dad—"

"She needs to be safe," John snapped. "I just… things are happening. Sam, you be careful. You two can't escape it, because you're _you_, and you're Winchesters. But Emma, Emma doesn't have to be tangled up in this. She's my daughter, and I want her safe. I know that you boys want her to be safe, too."

"Alright, Dad," Dean finally agreed. Sam opened his mouth to protest, but Dean shook his head pointedly.

"But if you do see her, tell her that I love her, okay?"

"Okay," Dean said. "I promise. Sammy, if you see Emma, you'll tell her that Dad loves her?"

"Of course," Sam said hastily.

**Kansas City, Missouri: August, 2014- Croatoan Timeline (S05E04: The End: Supernatural, Pre-Series Once Upon a Time)**

"There's only one person who knows about this," Dean said. "Because she walked in on us, and it was highly embarrassing for both parties. Emma's never told anyone, as far as I know, but she threatened to tell Sam a few times. Rhonda Hurley. We were… oh, nineteen? She let us try on her panties. They were pink. And satiny. And you know what? We kinda liked it."

Future!Dean nodded stiffly. "Alright, fine."

Dean stared, shocked that his future counterpart could let the mention of Emma go so easily. He and Sam rarely talked about their lost little sister, hopefully living a normal, happy, fulfilling life. It was imperative, now that he was Michael's vessel, that the angels remained oblivious to his connection Emma Swan. He had dropped her name on purpose—it would have been just as easy to just reference Rhonda Hurley.

So he picked the lock on the cuffs, wandered in to find Cas all high and stoned and up to his ears in sex. It was disturbing in more than one way. But he was finally dragged into war council with his future self, future Cas, Chuck and a couple of his future self's generals—including Risa, who future him had clearly pissed off.

"Okay, clearly, you've got a problem," future him snapped.

"Yeah, the fuck is up with Emma?" Dean snarled, slamming his hands on the table and getting right into his future self's face.

"Nothing," he said stiffly.

"Yeah, I call bullshit. Your reaction to her name was not right. Where is my baby sister!"

"What are you two talking about?" Cas was clearly out of his mind, but with it enough to hear the conversation. "You have Sam and Adam. No sister."

"Not by blood," Dean growled through his teeth. "But in all the ways that matter. Where. _Is. She?_"

"She's gone," his future self said. "Happy now? Sam's gone, and Adam's gone, and Emma's _gone_, you moron, because I didn't say yes to Michael! I went to find her when everything went to shit, but she was already infected. I killed her, because I knew she'd rather die than live that way. Look, if you say yes to him in time, he'll protect the people that you want protected. He obviously can't guarantee Sam's safety, but Emma? If you go to him in time, he'll keep her safe."

Fuck. That was, perhaps, the only thing that maybe pushed him in that direction. Shit was going down, and the thing that was keeping him strong was his need to keep Sam safe. But Emma was important, too. There weren't that many people left that mattered on a personal level. Sam, obviously. Bobby. Cas. Jo and Ellen. Lisa and her kid (that Lisa swore wasn't his, but he wasn't totally sure). And Emma. If Michael could guarantee all of those people's safety except for Sam's, then Dean was almost tempted. The thing was, none of those people mattered as much as Sam. Emma was the only one that came close.

…

"So who's Emma, anyway?" Zachariah asked, slime practically oozing off his person.

"You'll never find her," Dean snapped. "There are thousands of people named Emma, you'll never find the one that matters to me. She has no blood connection to me. No paper trail. The only living people who remember her being associated with our family are me and Sam, and even if you go to Dad, he'll never tell." Well, Bobby knew Emma too. And Pastor Jim had known her, and Caleb. Ellen knew _about_ her, he knew, but he didn't think that either her or Jo had ever met her. But he wasn't about to give Zachariah ideas.

Then he was standing on a street with Cas, and praising his angel's timing, and his stiff lack of social skills.

**Boston, Massachusetts (Post S05E22: Swan Song: Supernatural, Pre-Series Once Upon a Time)**

The blonde that answered the door when he knocked did nothing but stand and stare. She was tall, and thinner than she should have been. Her face seemed to have permanent stress lines etched in it.

"Dean?" Her tone was incredulous.

"Emma," he gasped out. He nearly collapsed on top of her, as eager as he was to get inside. He wrapped his arms around her too-thin form and roughly pulled her into his chest, clinging with careful precision.

Lisa had volunteered to come with him, once he'd explained what he had to do in Boston, but he'd needed to do this on his own.

"Dean, I… what _happened_?" Emma asked, carefully ferrying him into her apartment. Dean observed the devil's trap drawn into the rug in the entry-way, the lines of rock salt along her apartment windows.

"Sammy's gone," he gasped out, collapsing into her couch. The apartment was cold, well-decorated and impersonal. The decorations were entirely bought paintings, rather than pictures of actual people. There was a white bowl with fake fruit in it in the middle of the coffee table, a flat screen TV on the wall, a white shag rug. Modern and expensive, but it looked sort of like a hotel.

Emma's expression was stricken. She sunk down next to him, seemed to have a minor war with herself over whether to edge close to him. This woman, this cold, lonely, broken woman, didn't touch people. Dean could tell. But that wasn't the way that the Winchesters lived, and Emma was a Winchester in all of the ways that mattered.

Finally, she gave in to her instincts, and fastened one arm around his neck to yank him into her shoulder. Dean dropped all of his weight on the only real family that he had left, and let the tears run through.

This was the Impala's last journey for now, Dean had decided. She was for hunting, and to drive her around to construction work seemed… sacrilegious, almost. Also, the arsenal that was built into the trunk wasn't something that he wanted to be driving around with.

But for this? Of course he had driven the Impala, the only home that he or Sam or Emma, lonely, lost, broken children had ever known.

"Tell me what happened? Was it a ghost? Vampire? Shifter?" Emma asked.

Dean raised his head. "Lucifer."

Emma stared. "_What_."

Dean couldn't resist smirking. "Lucifer. The devil. It took the devil to keep Sammy down. We… we stopped the apocalypse, Em. We stopped the apocalypse, but to get Lucifer back into hell, Sam had to pull him down. He's trapped in Lucifer's Cage, deep past the pit and beyond even Cas' reach."

"God," Emma muttered.

"Nope," Dean snapped. "God wasn't interested in cleaning up his mess, which is why me and Sammy had to do it. Emma, I also have to tell you…"

"What?"

"Dad. Dad's gone. He has been for five years, now. But he made me and Sam promise not to go near you, not to put you in danger. And with what we've been through in the past few years, I don't really want to say that he was wrong."

Emma's expression twisted in pain. She knew that hunting was dangerous.

"He said to tell you if I ever saw you again—he said to tell you that he loves you. And Sam, Sam made me promise to find you when it was all done, and tell you the same. So. There's that. Dad, and Sam, they love you. They'll always love you."

"So what are you doing now?" Emma asked hesitantly, eyeing him like he was going to disappear if she blinked.

"I'm done. I'm finished. Sam made me promise that I'd get out. There was this girl. Lisa Braeden. She has this kid, his name is Ben. She still swears that he isn't mine, but I'm not sure. I found them, I'm living with them. It hasn't exactly been a picnic. I drink too much, and I wake everyone up with my nightmares. But I'm getting better, I think. I just had to find you. To tell you. Sam saved the world, Emma, and the only reason that I was strong enough to let him was because of you."

Emma's expression was so devastated that he couldn't stop himself from yanking her back against him and clinging for a good half-hour.

"So, what are you up to now?" He finally got around to asking.

Emma snorted. "I'm a bounty hunter."

"_What_?"

…

"Hey Emma?" he said as he was leaving.

"Yeah?" Emma was standing solidly, and clearly holding back tears for his sake.

"If you wanna know what's happened to Sammy and me over the last few years, look up this book series—_Supernatural_, by Carver Edlund," Dean said. "Well. For my peace of mind, promise that you'll skip over our sex scenes, but if anyone deserves to know what's in those books, it's you. I want you to know what Sam did for the world."

"You guys have a book series?"

"The author, his real name is Chuck Shurley. He's a prophet of God, though for a long time even he didn't know it. We practically gave him a heart attack when we showed up on his doorstep."

Emma found the books. Emma read the books. They were hardly literary masterpieces, but if they hadn't been about her brothers she probably would have enjoyed them. Instead, she had to struggle not to throw up when Jess died, when Sam died, when Dean sold his soul and when the Trickster killed him over and over and over, and then when he was ripped apart by hellhounds.

She was rarely mentioned in the books, but there were a couple of moments when her name came up—like her Dad dying, before Dean's contract had come due, in 2014 and right before Sam went to meet Lucifer in Detroit. It was kind of a mind screw, to be honest. She had no idea how Dean and Sam had handled the weirdness of reading these books if she was bewildered even by mention of her name.

The ones online ran up to Sam jumping into hell with Lucifer curled under his skin, and Dean going to live a normal life with Lisa Braeden. Emma couldn't throw _Swan Song_ across the room like she wanted to, since it was on her laptop, so instead she dug up the last paperback—_No Rest For the Wicked, _and threw that instead, then curled up into a ball to indulge in a good, gut strangling cry. She didn't cry often, but she figured that the situation warranted it. Especially since it sounded like most of the fans had cried at the end, based on the comments, and Dean and Sam were fictional characters to them—not their real living flesh brothers.

**Sioux Falls, South Dakota (S06E11: Appointment in Samarra: Supernatural, Pre-Series Once Upon a Time)**

"He should be… well, the word that I would use is not _fine_, however, his soul is now where it belongs," Death said.

"Thank you," Dean replied. "And you didn't have any trouble with the wall?"

"No. All of his memories of hell are sealed behind it. I'll warn you that it cannot hold forever."

"But it should be fine for now?" Dean clarified.

"For now, yes, Sam should be alright."

"Um—Death?"

"Yes?"

"Before you go, I was wondering… there was one more favour that I wanted to ask for. I—there isn't anything anywhere that can track you, right? If you want to go somewhere without being detected, there's no demon that could follow you, no angel?"

"That is correct."

"So if you go somewhere, not even Raphael can follow you?" Dean clarified, the enemy that he was most concerned with at the moment.

"No. The archangel cannot find me if I do not wish to be found. The only being that could is God, but he is uninterested in the affairs of this realm."

"Well, there's… a person. That's precious to me and to Sam, and I can't contact her because I don't want to lead Raphael to her."

"Dean, what are you doing?" Cas was standing behind him now, and Dean took comfort in his angel at his shoulder.

"Alright," Death prompted him.

"I didn't stay away from her to keep her safe during the whole apocalypse just to get her dragged into this mess now, so if she won't be safe with you knowing about her, then just tell me now."

"Your friend should be perfectly safe. You know that I do not concern myself with the politics of this world."

"Good. So… if you could just go to this person, and tell her that Sam's okay now… please?"

Death sighed. "I suppose that I don't see why not. I don't have anything immediate that I must do. Who do you want me to find?"

"Her name is Emma Swan. Last time I contacted her, she lived in Boston, but that may have changed. She's our sister. Not biologically," Dean held up a hand to forestall Cas' protest. "She was raised with me and Sam, but she was injured when she was fifteen. If you could maybe… not mention who you actually _are_, it might be better—I don't see any reason to freak her out. Just tell her that Sam's back, and he's going to be okay. If she doesn't believe that you came from me, tell her the name Rhonda Hurley, she'll know what that means."

"I can do that for you," Death confirmed. "If only because I'm now anxious to meet another Winchester. You are all so very fascinating."

"Emma's not like us," Dean said. "She got out of hunting when she was really young, she's lived a normal life ever since. I just want to keep it that way."

"I will deliver your message."

"Thank you."

…

Emma unlocked the door to her apartment, and screamed as she stepped inside. The older man was sitting on her couch in a suit.

"You must be Emma Swan," he said, British accent making him sound incredibly distinguished. You know, if he hadn't _broken into her apartment_.

"Um, yes?"

"I am Death. Dean asked that I refrain from telling you that, but I wish to see your reaction."

"What?" Emma asked, nearly swaying forward.

"I've come bearing a message from your older brother. Sam is… or will be, alright."

"Dean said that he was gone," Emma objected, numbly carrying forward to seat herself on the chair.

"I got him back. There are few beings powerful enough to walk realms in such a manner, but I am most certainly one of them. Your brother made a deal with me to bring Sam back, and then he asked that I come and tell you that Sam will be alright."

Emma stared.

"How do I know that you're not some other monster?"

"Dean said to mention a person named Rhonda Hurley?" Emma went beat red at the memory. "Interesting. I wonder what, exactly, that name is associated with? Both you and Dean seem embarrassed by it."

She decided that Dean deserved a bit of revenge, given the scare that he'd just given her. "When I was fourteen, I walked in on him and Rhonda Hurley doing something really kinky, that my poor, virgin eyes were forever traumatized by."

Death snorted loudly. "Another Winchester! You really are part of that family, aren't you?"

"Not by blood," Emma started to protest.

"No. You just looked the most dangerous and powerful being that you have ever encountered in the eye, and told me something to embarrass your brother. Only a Winchester would be capable of such audacity."

"Um. I _think_ that was a complement?"

"It was most certainly a complement," Death stated.

"Well, thank you, then."

"You have a destiny, my dear," Death declared. Emma frowned. She didn't have any kind of destiny. She wasn't important.

"I don't," Emma started.

"Oh, you do. There are people relying on you. It isn't time yet, I should think. But one day, you will be ready. And… I don't normally do this, but you _have_ made a greater impression on me than your older brother. Sam and I have not spoken all that much, but Dean is… annoyingly disrespectful, given who and what I am. I will offer you a favour, free of charge. One favour, equal to one life saved, or some other task that you need completed. Call my name, and I will come."

Emma figured that she had _no idea_ how big it was, what he was offering her. She didn't disbelieve him, but she knew that it was probably hugely important, and worth more than it sounded.

"Thank you. And thank you for telling me about Sam."

**Storybrooke, Maine (Post S07E23: Survival of the Fittest, Supernatural, S01E01: Pilot, Once Upon a Time)**

Emma Swan was no stranger to the supernatural, and whatever Henry thought, curses didn't _work_ like that. He was insistent, but there was absolutely nothing to back it up. She'd glanced around for hex bags and sigils, any little sign that Regina was actually a witch. There wasn't one. She was a somewhat cold woman, sophisticated and smooth, but there was no sign of magic use.

So maybe Henry's whole 'curse' theory was absolutely ridiculous, but Emma Swan was no stranger to the supernatural. Maybe that was why she was so adamant that he was _wrong_—magic didn't _work_ like that, and none of it could be associated with fairytales or happy endings. When witches cursed people, they didn't forget who they were in favour of living a mildly unfulfilling life in a little town in Maine—their intestines started consuming their bodies from the inside out. Their blood boiled in their veins. She had seen more than one witch-related aftermath, and Henry's idea of a curse didn't fit into that picture. Of all the monsters that Emma had encountered during her short career as a hunter, witches were the ones that gave her the most nightmares.

Besides, she didn't need Snow White and Prince Charming to be her parents. She didn't need parents at all—for Chrissakes, she was twenty-eight years old. There had been a whole host of foster parents that had never bothered to treat her as more than a meal stamp. And, of course, there had been the one man that she had called 'Dad'.

Through the eyes of an adult, Emma knew that John Winchester was an incredibly flawed and single-minded individual who should not have been raising children—either his own sons, or the random, foster-care afflicted girl that he'd encountered during a hunt, shoved into his car in order to save from the incredibly angry spirit that was chasing her, and never bothered to put back.

Not that she had completely dropped hunting. In the course of her bounty hunting, Emma had encountered a few spirits, salted and burned a few graves. Nothing too exerting, but when she'd run into something supernatural, she'd done something about it.

She had to conclude that Henry was having issues with his biological mother giving him up for adoption and his adoptive mother being such a single-mindedly focused professional woman, one who was probably a little bit strict and unforgiving. She probably made too big of a deal about grades, and insisted on strict schedules, dinnertime and bedtime, and Henry was cracking under the pressure.

But there was nothing to do except humour him. She didn't need Prince Charming and Snow White to be her parents, and she _certainly_ didn't need to be the saviour of this town from the curse. Something about that tugged at her mind, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was.

Anyway, she was a twenty-eight year old _adult_ who didn't need a fairytale to find fulfillment in life. But the sheriff was cute, and Henry obviously needed her in his life for just a little bit. Just to make sure that he was okay.

**Storybrooke, Maine (Post S07E23: Survival of the Fittest, Supernatural, S01E22:A Land Without Magic, Once Upon a Time)**

She was covered in grime. She had some experience in fighting monsters, of course, but her father's sword was so off balance, she wasn't sure how a person could be expected to stab a turtle with it, let alone a dragon.

Fuck. Her _father_. Because the curse was apparently real, and David and Mary Margaret were her _parents_. Well, that was tough for them, because the only person that was worthy of the title of parent to her was John Winchester, fucked up though his parenting methods had been. And since he was dead, Emma felt extremely uncomfortable allowing David and Mary Margaret to occupy John's place in her mind.

But it didn't matter now, did it? Henry was dying, and since Gold had taken the true love potion, she had no way to save him. Still, she and Regina both rushed to his side, united in their desire to save him, when she remembered.

She skidded to a stop next to his bed. She wasn't sure what she needed to do here, but calling his name was a good start, right?"

"Death?"

Regina stared at her in disbelief.

"Death?" Emma called again. And… it worked. The man cut just as impressive of a figure as he had the last time that they'd met. He was dressed in a neat black suit, and he stood at his full, distinguished height.

"Emma Swan," he greeted softly.

"The last time that we met, you offered me a favour."

"I did, at that. And since then, you have even further cemented your place as my favourite member of the Winchester family, since your brothers _bound me_ when we last met." He sounded completely disgusted with the very thought.

"Um. Sorry?" Emma offered. "That must have been unpleasant."

"Yes. Quite. Now, what is it that you would like from me?"

"That's my son. He's dying. Please save him."

"Who are you, and what are you going to do to him?" Regina demanded.

Emma's eyes widened. "Shut up, Regina," she ordered flatly. "Seriously, shut up."

Death stepped forward, and pressed one hand to Henry's forehead. Henry gasped and flung upwards under his hands.

"Careful. You're alright," Death stated. Emma sighed in relief.

"Thank you."

"Who _are _you? Nobody should be capable of undoing that spell," Regina said harshly.

"_Regina_! I'll explain in a minute, just shut up, okay?" Emma ordered. Death smirked.

"Well, Emma Swan, you remain my favourite member of the Winchester family." She stepped forward and cradled Henry in her arms. Henry leaned into her as she dropped down to kiss him atop the head.

"I love you," she murmured, holding him closer.

A shockwave released from around them, flying in every direction.

"There we are," Death stated. "I told you that you had a destiny, did I not?"

All around them, people in the hospital were staring in amazement. Clearly, the curse was broken.

"Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm sorry about Dean and Sam, Dad never did teach them much in the way of social skills," Emma added, feeling like this dangerous being should probably be pacified.

"That's quite alright, my dear. I've come to expect such behaviour from Winchesters. And I do understand why they felt the circumstances were dire enough to go that far, even if I find the experience unpleasant."

"What happened?"

"Castiel, their angel, absorbed all of the souls in Purgatory and declared himself God," Death stated. "It was… quite a disastrous turn of events, especially since he accidently released Leviathan from its prison, and they had to deal with _that_."

Emma winced. She didn't entirely understand what he meant, but it didn't sound good. At all.

"I suppose this is another Winchester, then?"

"I told you, I'm not a Winchester by blood," Emma said. "But yes, this is my son, Henry. Well. I sort of share him with Regina. That's her there. Henry, this is Death."

"Hi," Henry said, unfazed by this development. Probably kind of like Emma had been unfazed to walk into a graveyard at twelve years old and discover John Winchester digging up a grave.

Death nodded at her. "Well, Emma, it has been a pleasure. I think… I think, when it's time, I believe I shall come for you myself."

Then he disappeared. Regina was staring. Henry was still against her, and Emma was trying to process what, exactly had just happened.

Death was a natural part of life. Everyone died eventually, and usually, reapers collected their souls. Death hadn't been threatening her. Death didn't personally reap just anybody, and the fact that he'd said that he'd come for her was, if anything, a _huge_ honor.

Still, though, it was just a bit creepy to contemplate.

**Present Day: Storybrooke, Maine (Post S08E11: LARP and the Real Girl, Supernatural, post S02E09: Queen of Hearts, Once Upon a Time)**

Emma shifted a huge pile of paperwork off of her desk and sighed as she fell into her chair. It was funny, really, with everything going on around here, that paperwork still had to be done. And since David hadn't really been doing it, there was a whole lot of backlog that she needed to get going on.

But she was home. Away from the land of ogres and caves, back with Henry and David. She needed to process everything that had happened in the Enchanted Forest, from what had happened between her and Mary Margaret to having to leave Aurora and Mulan behind in that deserted wasteland.

And also, that infuriatingly sexy pirate captain that saw a little bit too deeply into her soul for her liking, and pulled off a hook instead of a hand and leather pants a little too well to be healthy for her blood pressure.

_Fuck_. Town full of handsome knights, charming princes and gentle stable boys, all, literally straight from the pages of a fairytale, and the person that she was most attracted to since Graham was _Captain Hook_. What did that _say_ about her, really?

Then the door opened. Emma didn't turn to face it, expecting David, or maybe Ruby—hey, maybe that would work? She could hire Ruby to help her with the paperwork for a bit in here, if Granny could spare her at the diner.

"Hi," a brain-meltingly familiar voice said. "Agent Stanley, FBI. I'm here about—"

"Dean?" She spun around to take in the sight of her eldest brother dressed in an ill-fitting, very cheap monkey suit.

"Emma?"

He had crossed the room in a few quick strides and pulled her against him roughly. She was stiff for a few moments before she melted against him, pressing to his chest and burying her face in his shoulder to breathe in the smell of gun oil and leather and something rusty that was probably blood.

"Em," he said, his voice cracking.

"Emma!" The door had flung open without her even noticing, and she didn't bother to break away from her big brother to greet whoever was there. It had been too long, and the last time that she'd gotten to hug Dean was so tinged in tragedy that she couldn't remember it without feeling a lump in her throat.

"Emma, there are outsiders in the town. Clearly, whatever Regina did to keep people from noticing this place is gone, and there's a couple of guys in—" Mary Margaret, because that was definitely Mary Margaret's voice, trailed off as she entered the main room, probably utterly gobsmacked to find Emma embracing one of these outsiders.

"Mary Margaret," Emma sighed, removing her face from being muffled by Dean's cheap suit. "A bit busy."

"But- but—"

"Emma, there's a guy at Granny's!" Ruby had come barrelling through the door now. "I mean, he's really hot and all, but he's kind of not from around here, and he's also kind of intimidatingly large…" she trailed off.

"Sam's here?" She clarified at Dean, who nodded. "Sam's okay? After, um, whatever happened with Death and Lucifer?"

"Yeah," Dean said, his voice heavy with relief. "Yeah, he's fine now. He's Sammy again."

In the next second, she had yanked out of Dean's arms and bolted for the door. Dean followed her past a stunned Ruby and Mary Margaret as she barrelled down the street towards Granny's and shoved the door open with more force than was probably necessary.

"Sam?" She gasped, breathless with all of the feelings welling up.

Sam had been seated at one of the booths at Granny's, everyone in the vicinity giving him a wide berth. As soon as she barrelled in, he stood up abruptly, unfolding to an intimidatingly tall stature. Sam had filled out since he was sixteen—he was _huge_. Tall, thick muscled and long-limbed, broad shouldered. Two parts of Emma's brain warred with each other—the part that recognized the potential threat that Sam posed and could completely understand why Ruby was intimidated by him, given how big he was, and the part that knew that Sam was a gentle giant who would never hurt someone who wasn't hurting other people first.

"Emma." His voice had gotten impossibly deeper. His hair was longer and less shaggy, styled to either side of his face instead of flopping into it. But the biggest difference about him, Emma could see, was the unspeakable _weight_ behind his eyes. Something about the way that he held himself, the look in his eye, said that he had been dragged through hell by the heel, and left pieces of himself there when he came out the other side.

And some of the things that Dean had said the last time she'd seen him—she didn't figure that for a metaphor.

Sam… Sam was _alive_. She had known that, of course, but seeing him now made the relief almost crush her to her knees. Instead, she staggered forward and walked straight into him, arm hooking around his neck. Sam's arms both wrapped around her almost as an afterthought, massive hands spreading on her back. One of them rose to cradle the back of her head against his shoulder, and the other slid to the small of her back like he was trying to yank her inside of his body. Emma clung to her brother and tried to suppress her relieved trembling.

She wasn't a small woman. She certainly wouldn't be considered short by most people. But next to Sam, she felt almost delicate for the first time in years. He had tucked her head under his chin, and was rocking back and forth in a continuous motion that was probably meant to soothe both of them.

"Sammy! I wanna hug baby sister, you're hogging her!"

Sam let out an exasperated sigh into the top of Emma's head and released her. "How old are you, Dean?" Sam asked.

Dean just grinned at Sam in an incredibly familiar way—taunting half-smirk, half joy—and stepped up to wrap one arm over Emma's shoulders. Emma was instantly catapulted back in time, to being curled under a worn blanket in the backseat of the Impala as Dean blasted Metallica from the front seat, and Sam yelled about turning it down so that he could study. John would just roll his eyes and refuse to get involved. She and Dean would play with those toy soldiers that were meant for children much younger than them, and eventually, after he got enough balled up pieces of paper hurled at his head, Sam would give up on his studying and join in.

"Ninety-six," Dean said, smirking.

"One hundred and fifty-two, if we're going there," Sam muttered.

Wisely enough, Emma decided that she'd rather not know. Obviously, that was them counting the years that they'd been in hell, and she didn't like to think about it.

"Emma, what's going on?" Ruby and Mary Margaret had followed her from the sheriff's station, and picked up David along to way. "How do you know these men?"

"I may have been a bit of loner," Emma protested. "But I _did_ know people before I came here, guys. These are my foster brothers, from one of my families when I was younger. Dean and Sam Winchester."

Mary Margaret looked gutted, and David not much better, and Emma winced. They had been under the impression that she'd never connected with any of her foster families, and though they probably hated themselves for the feeling, they were probably kind of glad for it. Discovering that there were people that Emma called family, people that they might have _compete_ with, probably hurt them.

As far as Emma was concerned, she was still working through her feelings surrounding her biological parents, and though she was sure she'd eventually figure it out, for now it just drew the line between blood family and emotional connection. It was that much stronger now, now that Dean and Sam were here and she remembered the father that John Winchester had been to her. And from what she knew of how regular families raised their children, John hardly deserved a 'World's Best Dad' mug as it was.

Still, though, it also acted as a bit of punch to the gut to _her_, though she pushed it aside. If this highlighted the difference of how she felt about John versus Mary Margaret and David, then it also highlighted the difference between how Henry felt about her versus Regina.

Ruby could clearly see the tension, and took it upon herself to diffuse it.

"Hot brothers, huh? You're supposed to inform your friends when you have hot brothers, Emma."

Dean winked at her, and Sam shifted uncomfortably. Without missing a beat, Emma smacked him clear over the head. "Down, boy," she ordered flatly. "She's not your type, anyway."

"Everyone's my type, Em."

She snorted. She still very vividly remembered the first time that she'd met Dean Winchester, wandering into his family's motel room the morning after _very clearly_ having been fucked by a guy, seventeen year old pretty boy with hickeys all over his body.

"Trust me, she's not." Dean was not the type of hunter to just shelve the fact that someone was a werewolf long enough to have sex with them, even though she knew that Ruby could control herself. Not that she wanted to bring up the fact that Ruby was a werewolf—if there was anyone guaranteed to react badly to Ruby's… condition, it was her brothers. Also her name, which really couldn't be helped.

"Dean," Sam snapped.

"It's good that you guys are here," Emma said, moving forward and out of Dean's hold. "I could really use your help getting everything organized. Except…" Then she realized that they had to be here for a _hunt_. It was the only reason for them to be here, the only reason that Dean had walked into the Sheriff's office with a monkey suit and a (presumably) fake FBI badge. "Hey, _agent_," she snapped. Dean shifted sheepishly. Sam offered her a raised eyebrow. "You _impersonate_ _federal agents_, now? Do you realize how illegal that is? What if you got caught?"

"Happens more than we'd like it to," Sam admitted easily. "We're usually gone before the dust settles, though, so..."

"I'm the sheriff," Emma announced flatly. "Now tell me what you're hunting, or what you _think_ you're hunting. Seriously, I will not have you running amok in my town, digging up graves and drawing pentagrams on things without even working it through first."

"Em!" Dean sounded wounded. "Have you ever known us to _run amok_?"

"Remember the cat lady?" Emma asked pointedly, referencing a particularly embarrassing hunt for all involved, in which nobody had been able to figure out which bones needed salting, and the ghost had turned out to be the vengeful spirit of one of her cats.

"Okay, point," Dean admitted, wincing.

"It's been fifteen years since that incident, and it's still one the most embarrassing hunts that I've ever been involved in," Sam said ruefully. "Emma."

"Yes, Sammy?"

"Okay, seriously? Sammy is an overweight twelve year old nerd—it's _Sam_. Secondly, are we _actually_ discussing hunting in the middle of a crowded diner at top volume?"

"I should explain what's going on here," Emma muttered.

That was when the door opened and admitted Gold, who leaned heavily on his cane and propped the door open for Belle to precede him inside. "Yes, Miss Swan, you really should."

"Gold," David growled.

"Maybe it's time that we go back to the Sheriff's station?" Emma suggested pointedly. "You know, for privacy?"

Maybe it was time that Emma's past came out.

**Yay for crossover experiments! AO3 (and apparently also ff, now that I'm adding this here) thinks that 'yay' is a spelling error, so let's irritate it for a minute: yay yay yay yay yay! Okay, now that's over with. I was bored, and this popped into my head. Can also be found at my account (same username) at AO3, if you prefer to read with that formatting (I'd like you to, honestly, since the tags and the summary are both more comprehensive and let you know what you're reading more. But that is a matter of personal preference), though I promise to update both at the same time. Basically, this a gratuitous 'everything happens exactly the way that I want it to' story, that is going to probably come out borderline crack even if it isn't right now. Gabriel will make his first appearance soon. I've debated throwing some Sabriel into the mix, and if you're in support of that please tell me now so that I can write it into the next chapter.**

**A note about timelines: because Supernatural timelines get kind of ambiguous post s5 (with the year between s5 and s6, and then between s7 and s8) I did my best to match them up with each other and with the real world. As it stands, ignoring those two years that Supernatural is ahead, it's about December 2012 or January 2013, matching S8 of Supernatural and s2 of Once Upon a Time- making Dean 34, Sam 30, Emma 29 and Henry 11. If you count those two years, it makes Dean 36 and Sam 32, but then either the age gap between them and Emma has changed from the start of the story, or Emma's 31 (which doesn't fit with the whole prophecy, 28th birthday thing). If I've made any glaringly confused mistakes beyond messing with those years, please point them out to me and I'll try to fix them.**

**About pairings: background or minor pairings right now, but there will be hints of Dean/Cas, and Captain Hook/Emma and Gold/Belle**

**And comments are everyone's friend!**

****** Unrelated side-note: (if you're unfamiliar with AO3, then that is a crime that I must solve right away by telling you that it is another fanfiction site with less rules about ratings and RPF if you're into that sort of thing, and AO3 stands for archiveofour own. I can't post a link because ff strips them, but just google either AO3 or archive of our own and you'll get straight there. If you're going to specifically look for me or my story, then google my username followed by AO3, and the first result should be my dashboard)**


	2. Interlude

When the odd troop of people arrived back at the Sheriff's office, Emma was unsurprised to note Regina sitting at her desk, looking particularly royal. Regina knew everything that was going on in her town, even now that the curse was broken and nobody liked her anymore.

David and Mary Margaret entered behind them, and there was all the perfunctory glaring between Regina and Mary Margaret, and between David and Gold, who were still glaring from their first encounter at Granny's—then Belle cleared her throat, and Gold _stopped_ looking at David to focus his attention on her.

Confusion over how, exactly, Belle could shelve the knowledge of the horrible things that Gold had done enough to date the man aside, Emma could admit that she was obviously a positive influence.

The surprise was Gabriel, the sweetshop owner, leaning against the wall. He had an easy sort of grace about him, and though he was only about 5'8, he carried himself such that he seemed much taller. She hadn't even had a single conversation with him, and nobody had told her who he had been in the Enchanted Forest. She'd kind of had the impression that he wasn't particularly important to the grand scheme and power play that had been going on between Mary Margaret and Regina (except, of course, for the fact that it had all been orchestrated by Gold)

"Hey, pretty boys," he taunted without pushing off the wall.

"Gabriel?" Sam asked flatly.

"Fuck!" Dean yelled. "What the _fuck_, dude?"

"Are you _that_ Gabriel?" Emma asked, flashing back to the books that had had the trickster in them. "I thought that he was dead?"

"Up until about ten seconds ago, so did we," Sam pointed out, lurching forward to catch Dean by the arm before he could try to give Gabriel a black eye.

"What, you think Daddy's up for resurrecting baby bro on the side, but not me?" Gabriel drawled.

"But why are you _here_?" Emma asked. "I mean, that doesn't make any sense! You've been here since before I came here, you were cursed. You weren't in Henry's book and I wasn't sure who you were supposed to be, but you were obviously from the Enchanted Forest."

"Hold on, how do you know about him?" Sam asked. "And what do you mean, cursed?"

"I know about him because I've read your books," Emma said, smirking at the pained expression on Sam's face. "Don't worry, I tried to skip over the sex scenes, I don't want to know any of that. But I gotta say, Sam, that thing that you pulled with Madison—_kinky_, seriously, fuck, I thought you were the vanilla one." It physically pained her to even _think_ about Sam's sex life, but the expression on his face was _so_ worth it.

"Oh, you mean that stunt with the handcuffs and the chocolate sauce and the vibrating—" Gabriel started, sounding utterly delighted.

"Ack!" Sam interrupted. "Please stop talking now."

"I'd expect it from Dean-o, but not from you, Sasquatch. Those books are hysterical," Gabriel said happily. He turned to Emma. "Tell me, were you a fan? There are a lot of people online that refuse to accept that I'm dead—in fact, the entire community insists that I either faked my death or got resurrected, it does marvelous things for a person's ego."

"Right, like yours needs the help," Dean muttered.

"Dean, how does she know about those books?" Sam asked.

"I told her," Dean sighed. "I went to see her after you fell into hell. It took ages to find her, but I wanted her to _know_, what you had done. I wanted someone who knew that you actually existed to know about the sacrifice that you had made, and I didn't have the energy to tell her everything."

Sam paused, and turned very deliberately to look at Emma. "So you know everything."

"Yeah. I am so sorry. About everything, Sam. And I wish so badly that I could have been there for you. And _you_, yes, damnit, I loved you!" Emma snapped at Gabriel. "Seriously you're like my favourite character. Well. I like Castiel, and you. Crowley's entertaining, and Death and I have an epic bromance. Of course, the odds were a bit skewed, because I wasn't about to think of either of _them_ as characters instead of people. But why are you here? That doesn't make much sense."

"Since I got on the 'stop the apocalypse' train a bit late and all, Daddy didn't put me back into this world," Gabriel explained. "He suppressed my Grace down to just residual magic—probably so that I could catch the Dark One's attention and defend myself from the Evil Queen—and plopped me in the middle of fairytale world. Then _she_ activated the curse and I ended up trapped here." He gestured to Regina. "When you broke it, I got _all_ of my memories back, not just the ones from the Enchanted Forest. I've been laying low for the last couple of months, trying to figure out what happened in Heaven, because it's a huge mess up there."

Gold went still. "You can leave," he said.

Gabriel's eyes flashed, and he nodded sharply. "I can," he admitted. "I don't know how to fix that problem for anyone else, but yes, I can leave. So basically, Dad knew about the curse, and that's why he put me when he did and where he did. Convenient ride back from timeout and everything. So! Emma Swan, saviour extraordinaire and child of Snow White and Prince Charming," Gabriel said. "How do you know Dumb and Dumber?"

"Hey!" Dean protested.

"You released Leviathan," Gabriel seethed. "Of all the _stupid, ridiculous, irresponsible _things, you two morons could _possibly_ have done, you released Leviathan! I thought Lucifer was as far as you idiots _got_, but _no_, let's find something even _worse_, shall we? Something that'll eat the planet whole? Why the hell were you messing around with Purgatory, anyway?"

"It was Cas," Dean muttered. "We didn't figure out what he'd done until he was nearly going to do it, and then we couldn't stop him."

"So apparently, you're Dumb and Dumber, and Castiel gets the dubious honor of being 'Dumbest'," Gabriel snarked.

"See, that's why he's my favourite character," Emma said happily.

Her brothers glared at her. "You should hang out with Charlie," Dean said.

"So? How do you know them? I was under the impression that people who were acquainted with them for any length of time usually end up dead? I know from experience," Gabriel said.

"Yes, who are these people, Miss Swan?" Regina demanded, turning her laser glare to Emma instead. Emma resisted the urge to glare back.

"These are my older brothers," she sighed. "Dean and Sam Winchester, meet the mayor, Regina Mills, and Mr. Gold, the unsavoury guy who owns most of the property in the town. That's Belle, his… um…" Emma trailed off awkwardly. As far as she could tell, Gold was basically Belle's sugar daddy. Nothing at all against them, especially since, despite the evidence to the contrary, Belle was a pleasant, friendly, intelligent and well-adjusted individual, who was mentally more healthy than Emma could boast of in her entire history. But considering the way that the twenty-first century would frame their relationship, Emma wasn't sure if there was a tasteful way to describe it.

"Our relationship is none of anyone's concern, Miss Swan," Gold snapped.

"No, I know," Emma said. "Look. Full disclosure here, Sam and Dean are hunters. They hunt down monsters and kill them, and they came here because they know how to recognize magic when they see the signs of it."

"We're very good at it," Dean said smirking, as he settled onto the end of the nearest desk. Without missing a beat, Emma shoved him off.

"Don't lean on my furniture."

Dean pouted outrageously, and Emma tried not to acknowledge the smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Dean might've been to hell and back, but he was still the same idiot that he'd been at age twenty, contrasting with Sam—who had changed so much that Emma barely recognized him.

"Jesus, Em," Dean drawled, dropping sideways into a chair. Every single female in the room, taken (Mary Margaret and Belle) or not (Regina) all stared at him. Emma coughed loudly. There were so many reasons why nobody in this room was allowed to look at her brothers with lust in their eyes. The prospects here were just too creepy.

"So what's this about a curse?" Sam directed the question to Emma and Gabriel, clearly ignoring everyone else present.

Gabriel snorted. "This entire town is full of characters from fairytales."

"What?" Dean said flatly.

"That doesn't even make _sense_!" Sam protested.

"Why are you telling them!" David protested.

"Charming, just because you want to get all jealous because your abandoned daughter found some family doesn't mean that you can afford to push away useful help," Gabriel drawled. "They're the fucking _Winchesters_, and that _means something_. What are you guys up to now?"

"We've got a prophet translating the demon tablet," Sam said.

"You found those old rocks?" Gabriel asked. "It doesn't matter, they don't say anything useful."

"There was something about trials? To close the gates of hell," Dean pointed out.

"That's a hoax. The gates of hell will remain open until Daddy wants them to be closed. And trust me, if you try to push them forward anyway, He will punish you for it. The person who completes those trials will die."

"What if we don't believe you, _trickster_?"

"Dean, I think he's telling the truth," Sam snapped.

"Is that some sort of _metaphor_?" Mary Margaret demanded. Sam, Dean and Gabriel all snorted in unison, and Emma barely held back her own derisive noise.

"I wish," Dean muttered. "Hell, a metaphor. Wouldn't that be just wonderful for everyone? I think that Crowley would make a great metaphorical figure."

"Is that a metaphor, or Freudian imagery?" Gabriel jabbed.

"Dude. _Gross_," Dean commented. "I don't stick my dick in hellspawn, thank you very much."

"Nope, you'll save that for the angel. Unless he's on top," Gabriel sang pointedly.

Sam started laughing so hard that he nearly keeled over, and ducked into a chair to catch his breath. "You have no idea how long I've been saying that!"

"Shut up, Cas and I aren't like that!"

"Right," Emma inserted, unable to keep quiet any longer. "You sleep with guys all the time, what's different about Castiel?"

"I think they were banging in Purgatory," Sam said, still half-wheezing with laughter. "But he won't tell me either way. Or he was sleeping with Benny. But I think that him and Cas were together for at least part of it."

"Benny's a vampire," Dean said.

"That's not an answer. You're avoiding the issue."

"Fine, yes, I slept with Benny. Happy?"

"Not really," Sam drawled. "You sleep with everyone."

"You slept with a vampire? That's a new one," Emma corrected mildly.

"You were in Purgatory?" That was Gabriel.

"Okay, okay, okay. One story at a time," Dean finally yelled. "And enough about my sex life. Jesus Christ, you people are worse than Cas!"

"Oh, is baby brother _interested_ in your sex life, Dean?" Gabriel asked.

"Do you _mind_?" Dean finally snarled.

"Oh, no, I'm just getting started," Gabriel flung back.

"_Guys_! Fuck, I forgot about this," Sam yelled.

"What did you forget about?" Emma asked.

"That the majority of mine and Dean's relationship with Gabriel is Dean and Gabriel trading sass over my head while I glare at each of them in turn," Sam muttered. "They flirt a lot, too, which can be kind of disturbing, especially at the Mystery Spot."

"Hey, _I_ didn't remember any of that," Dean said.

Sam rolled his eyes. "No, you just don't give a fuck if someone traps us in a time loop and kills you over a hundred times, as long as they're hot. You're way too easy for your own good, Dean."

"You weren't lying, were you, archangel?" Gold drawled, strategically breaking up the argument _and_ jabbing for answers that he wanted. Everything that this man did was manipulative, and Emma held back her sigh of disgust.

"What about?"

"You really were a nasty piece of work, weren't you? Worse than I've ever been. Worse than she's ever accomplished." He gestured to Regina, who's eyebrow went up in interest. "You said that the first time I found you wandering around my forest, wearing clothing that I'd never seen before, with the nastiest wound that I've ever seen a person recover from without magic and holding a blade more powerful than anything I'd ever encountered."

"You still had a hole in your chest?" Sam asked interestedly.

"Dad fixed my Grace. My vessel needed time to heal—archangel blades can cause quite a bit of damage."

"Lucifer didn't take it? Your sword?"

"It's _my_ blade," Gabriel snapped. "Lucifer could grab it out of my hands and stab me with it, but he can't actually use it in true combat. If you were thinking that he might take it and use it to fight Michael, it loses its power when I'm not wielding it. It isn't like those normal angel toothpicks that you run around using to stab demons. An archangel blade—of which there are four in all of creation—can only be wielded by its archangel."

"God?"

"Daddy needed insurance—he was handing the most powerful weapons ever to exist out, he needed to make sure that just anybody couldn't play around with them. The only two weapons that come close being on par with the archangel blades are Samuel Colt's gun and Cain's knife, which only works in conjunction with the Mark."

Then Gabriel reached into his jacket and produced a short, silver sword. It was unremarkable looking in every way, but Emma could somehow _feel_ the power emanating from it. Gold chuckled. Regina leaned towards it like it had magnetic pull.

"Ah," Gabriel snatched it from her vicinity. "I'm not about to let evil magic practitioners mess with my blade."

"I thought you just said that nobody but you can use it," Regina said interestedly.

"Well, yes," Gabriel said. "But still."

"You're just as bad as Dean with the Impala," Sam muttered.

"It is the most interesting thing that I've ever seen," Gold murmured, eyeing the blade with no small amount of greed in his eyes. "I took it from him, and the moment that it was away from his touch, the power vanished. It was about as useful as a piece of scrap metal, and not even a particularly well-crafted sword."

"Obviously not," Gabriel drawled. "I'm a _messenger_, not a warrior. I mostly just waved my blade around when the rank and file acted out. And, you know, got stabbed by Lucifer with it."

"Yeah, nice going," Dean muttered. Gabriel glared at him.

"Sam. Did you get Kali out?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "She went off on her own pretty quickly after we were away from the hotel, didn't even stick around to watch that _classy_ message that you left. But when I last saw her, she was fine."

"Thank you."

"You haven't been to see her yet?" Emma asked incredulously. "You've been back for two months, and you haven't bothered to tell her that you're not _dead_? She's going to fucking run you through again!"

"You know, you're a very judgemental fan," Gabriel said, pouting. "And Kali and I broke up centuries ago, she was with Baldur last time I saw her."

"And from what I remember, she was perfectly willing to let you stick your tongue in her mouth!"

"Are you seriously trying to hook him up with the Destroyer?" Dean said incredulously. "You know, _Kali_, the Hindu goddess of destruction?"

"I thought they were really cute together," Emma said airily, just to forcefully remind her brothers of that Becky girl that was their supposed 'biggest fan'. She wanted to get a look at their faces. Gabriel obviously caught on to what she was doing, and smirked wickedly as Sam and Dean both made horrified faces.

"What _I_ want to know is what any of this has to do with _us_?" Regina demanded. "You say they're useful, Trickster?" She directed the question towards Gabriel. "Why?"

"Um, because they killed Leviathan? Stabbed _me_, several times, might I add—and one of them, they even managed to actually catch me by surprise. This one," Gabriel jerked his thumb towards Sam. "He's Lucifer's true vessel, and this one is Michael's," gesturing at Dean. "Destiny had written out their stories a _long_ ass time ago, and they actually had the gall to say no. And they won, too. You are looking at two men who faced the hordes of heaven and hell, and _won_. They put the devil back in his Cage, and then they took care of my _other_ brother, too, while they were at it."

"Actually, that was Cas," Dean muttered. "If you're referring to Raphael."

"And if you're referring to Michael," Sam added. "That was Lucifer. I jumped, and then we were falling and Michael distracted me so that I lost control again, and _Lucifer_ was the one who actually pulled Michael down—I wouldn't have done that to Adam."

"Okay, okay, whatever. The point," Gabriel eyed Regina. "Is that they killed Azazel, and Lilith and Lucifer. Michael was dragged down because of what they did to Lucifer, and their pet angel killed Raphael. These two are fucking _legendary_, and they're legendary for refusing to stand down when fate and destiny and the goddamn horsemen of the apocalypse tell them to. They're a huge fucking pain in the ass, and together the two of them have skulls thicker than the Berlin Wall, but they have their uses."

"Gee, thanks. So flattered, you're making me blush," Dean snapped.

"You want to argue with me, _Team Free Will_?" Gabriel jabbed. "You even managed to talk _me_ into dying for your cause, and I gave up on the righteousness act a long time ago."

Regina leaned forward. "Okay, fine. But what about Henry?"

"Who's Henry?" Dean and Sam asked simultaneously. Emma winced. Gabriel smirked.

"Oh, yes, saviour,_ do _tell them who Henry is."

"My son," Emma muttered.

"Congratulations, you're uncles!" Gabriel added jovially.

"For _fuck's sake_, Gabriel, shut your damn mouth!" Dean yelled. "Your _what_?" He demanded of Emma.

"My son," Emma said. "I put him up for adoption when I was eighteen. _He_," she jerked her head accusingly at Gold, "arranged for him to be adopted by Regina, knowing that he would lead me back here to break the curse ten years later. So now we sort of… share him, it's complicated."

"Who the fuck knocked you up and left, because I'll fucking goddamn kill him," Dean growled viciously. Everyone who had been eyeing him in interest before was abruptly put off, because Dean Winchester was _dangerous_ when he was angry, and any idiot could see it. Emma could recognize that objectively, both of her older brothers were attractive. She could also recognize that even if Dean made you think about sex, you weren't about to think about sex with him with that expression in his eyes, unless you liked your sex lethal.

"A guy," Emma snapped. "It isn't important, he didn't know."

"His _name_," Dean growled.

"It doesn't matter!" Emma yelled.

"_Name_, Emma!"

"Neal Cassidy!" Emma snarled, goaded into saying it despite the fact that she wasn't ever planning on crossing paths with Neal again. "Happy?"

"Exceedingly," Sam said, sounding equally dangerous, if somewhat quieter about it. "Gabe?"

Gabriel suddenly looked interested. "Something that you wanted, Sammy?"

"This Neal Cassidy guy, where is he?"

"I have a more interesting question," Gabriel hummed. "Rumple, what's your kid's name?"

"Bae. Baelfire. Why?" Gold looked confused, like his world was tilting on it's axis.

"Weeellll, it might interest you to know that Neal Cassidy and Baelfire are the same person. Which _means_, children, that _your_ son is the father of _your_ child. Otherwise known as, congratulations, Gold, you're a grandfather."

"_What_?" Gold, Emma and Regina all yelled at the same time. Most everyone else in the room (Mary Margaret, David, Belle) looked too stunned to react, and Dean and Sam looked like they didn't understand why this was important.

"Christ, this is better than daytime TV."

"But how is that even possible? I didn't even know that you _had_ a son, Gold. And wouldn't he be _here_?"

"No, Miss Swan," Gold snapped. "The reason that I created this curse in the first place is because it was the only way to get to this world. There was a certain price involved in casting it, a price which I was not willing to pay. So I found someone who was." He gestured to Regina, who looked like her entire universe was being yanked down around her ears. Emma almost felt sorry for her, given the expression of utter hopelessness that had just washed into her eyes. "_Then_, of course, I had to ensure that I could leave Storybrooke, so I used a drop of your parents' true love in the curse. A built-in failsafe, ensuring that you, their child and the product of true love, would eventually be compelled to return and rescue us. But you know my son."

"If he's right, yes," Emma sighed.

"Of course I'm right," Gabriel said.

"Do you know—do you know where he might be?" Gold asked, sounding almost vulnerable.

"I haven't spoken to Neal in over a decade," Emma muttered. "You know, since he framed me for a bunch of crap that he stole and left me to rot in jail, as well as give birth to his child after promising that we could find somewhere to settle down and actually build a life together."

"You have to tell me something," Gold demanded frantically.

"Tell you _what_? That I met him when I tried to steal a car, only to find him sleeping in the backseat? That I didn't realize at first that he'd stolen it too? That we wandered aimlessly across the continent running scams and hustling pool and robbing convenience stores and staying in cheap motels? That I was a fucked up kid with abandonment issues and the only home that I'd ever known was the backseat of '67 Chevrolet Impala, and he was a fucked up kid with abandonment issues and he always said that it didn't matter that he'd never had a home, because we were going to build one together. That all he ever told me about his father was that he was a coward? What do you want me to say, Gold?" Emma wasn't _shouting_, exactly, but her voice was a lot louder than it maybe should have been.

Okay, maybe the whole Neal issue still cut a lot deeper than she was willing to admit.

Mary Margaret stood up abruptly. "Okay, I think that everyone needs to calm down and take a breather," she said, using a tone of voice that probably came in handy with her class full of fifth graders. "Gabriel, where are you getting this information?"

"That Baelfire and Neal Cassidy are the same person? I'm an angel, I know everything about a soul as soon as it comes to my attention. That's why Sam asked me where he was—he knew that as soon as Emma told me his name, I'd know everything about him."

Mary Margaret then turned to Sam, who she had clearly judged to be the more reliable source of Emma's two brothers. "This is accurate information about… _angels_?"

Sam and Dean both nodded.

"Okay. Mr. Gold, did you have any idea that Baelfire had had a son?" Mary Margaret continued. "I know that you did some manipulation to make Emma the saviour, and have Henry lead her back here, but did you have any idea that Henry was your grandson when you brought him here for Regina to adopt?"

"Of course not! Do you think that I'd have let that heartless bitch anywhere near my grandson if I'd known? Curse or not, I'd have found some other way to get her here," Gold muttered, glaring at Regina.

"Well _excuse me_, whose fault is it that I'm a heartless bitch to begin with? Tell me, how much of my life did you manipulate? My loveless marriage? _Daniel_? It all makes so much sense! Every time I tried to change, tried to turn away from the anger, you were right there to talk me right back towards darkness again, weren't you?"

"Oh, no, your majesty," Gold replied, smiling with all teeth. "Daniel was all on your evil mother's hands."

"And as if you didn't manipulate my mother to become what she was, too!"

"Well, I _will_ admit that Cora was, perhaps, directed towards reproducing in the right circumstances that would lead to _you_, dearie."

"_Rumple_," Belle snapped. And that was it. Gold shut up.

Yep. Belle was _definitely_ a positive influence. Pity she hadn't been around earlier, because Gold clearly could have used one when he was pulling everybody's strings like a puppet master.

"So let me get this straight," David interjected. "Emma had no idea of who she was or where she was from, and she was wandering around living an aimless life, and she just _happened_ to bump into the only other person from the Enchanted Forest, who travelled here years earlier with several stopovers in other realms. This person _happened_ to be _your_ son, Gold, when she was specifically destined to break _your_ curse. And we actually believe that this was _chance_ , at all? Neal never told you where he was from, and you never thought that there was anything odd about him and the way that he talked about his childhood or anything?" David directed at Emma.

"Actually," Emma said, shrugging. "Sometimes I wondered if maybe he was into hunting. I mean, I was used to living in different motel rooms and making money by the day, but he seemed to take to it a bit too easily. Eventually it occurred to me that most people might find that odd. But hunters… they're pretty fucked up and they don't get _out_ very often. Usually, if you're a hunter, you hunt until you screw up too badly not to come back from the dead. If he _had_ been a hunter, and he had actually gotten out, the last thing that I wanted to do was poke at that with a stick. I decided to leave it alone."

"He's not a hunter I've ever heard of," Sam offered. "Especially not under that name. And usually hunters use their real names or their main alias in the hunting community. And we've all heard of each other."

"Yeah, I've heard some things from the hunting community," Emma shot back. "I haven't been hunting, exactly, but I did the occasional salt and burn when I was bounty hunting. And if you pay attention, well, for some reason, a lot of the gossip seems to be accompanied by the phrase 'fucking Winchesters'. And hunters gossip like old ladies."

Sam at least had the decency to look ashamed. Dean just gave her a shit-eating grin.

"Where is he?" Gold demanded of Gabriel.

"New York," Gabriel replied instantly. "I _told you_, though, I can't fix whatever makes it so that you can't leave. I don't know what's caused it, but I do know that the magic in this world and the magic in the town are different and completely incompatible. I'm sure that has something to do with it."

"What do you mean?"

"This is supposed to be the land without magic," Gabriel elaborated, "And by your standards, that's even an accurate description. None of your spells, your magical artefacts, your weaknesses, none of them work here. But there is magic here—it just originates from somewhere different. Where magic in your world originates from nature and is neither dark, nor light until you've shaped it and your intentions have determined what you wish to do with it, magic in this world comes from either heaven—celestial power like an angel's blade or a seraph's abilities, naturally light and can only be harnessed by an angel—hell, crossroads deals, demon abilities, naturally dark and can only be harnessed by those who damn themselves to access it—or purgatory, natural abilities of Eve, passed to each of her children in turn."

"So you're saying that they can't work together?"

"I think that they can't exist together," Gabriel answered. "I think that the reason that I could feel my Grace but not use it in your world was because it wasn't compatible with your magic, which saturated the very air. Here, when the curse first broke but before you brought magic to this town, I could feel my entire Grace, but when you brought magic back, it was muted again. My first course of action was to snap myself outside the town line, where the full force of my Grace was available to me. And now, these two have rolled into town—specifically Sam, who has helped even the balance. When a person acts as an angel's vessel, they carry remnants of the Grace inside of them. Sam is carrying—"

"Don't tell me that I've got Lucifer's Grace in me," Sam muttered.

"It won't hurt you," Gabriel assured him. "It's just residual. It might help him find you if he were looking, but I think that won't really be a problem. But you're here, and you've brought Grace with you and that means that it sort of… backs mine up. The reason that you're all trapped in this town is to keep that magic in, because it isn't native to this land."

"So you have full use of your powers here, as do I?" Gold clarified.

"Yes."

"Oh, good. I'd like to see what you can do."

"You have to know, Dark One, that I'll wipe the floor with you."

"I know," Gold assured him. "I'm interested in—"

"How you can manipulate me. But it isn't going to happen. There's nothing that you have that I want, nothing that you can give me. Any and all debts that were incurred in the Enchanted Forest are paid off on both sides. I've been friends with Crowley for years, Gold. I'm not stupid enough to make bargains with creatures like you."

"You know Crowley? Fucking figures."


	3. After

"Mom!" Henry legged it into Granny's with his typical, eleven-year-old enthusiasm, and Emma accepted his hug with a casual arm wrapped around him.

"Henry," Emma greeted. "There are some people I'd like you to meet. This Sam and Dean Winchester, my older brothers from when I was younger. Your uncles."

Henry stared at her brothers, who were seated at the booth across from her, case-related papers spread all over the table.

"Uncles?" Henry said, awed.

"Hey, midget," Dean greeted. Sam coughed in protest.

"Hi, Henry. I'm Sam," he added, glaring pointedly at his older brother. "You can call me Uncle if you want to, or just Sam if Uncle makes you uncomfortable."

"You're Mom's brothers? I never knew you had brothers!" Henry turned to look at Emma accusingly.

"I… got separated from my family a long time ago, kiddo," Emma sighed. "I never thought I'd see them again, so I didn't think it would help anything to tell you about a family that you couldn't ever meet. Dad's gone, so you can't ever meet him." Thank God. She had loved John Winchester—she really, really had. But that didn't mean that she wanted him or his 'parenting methods' anywhere near her son. Things that had seemed awesome when she was twelve were now obviously dysfunctional.

"But David's your Dad!" Dean and Sam stared at her. Clearly, they'd missed that little fact when it came up in conversation earlier.

"Yes, Henry, biologically, David is my Dad," Emma agreed. "Just like biologically, I'm your mom, but that doesn't mean that you've stopped thinking of Regina as your mom, too. John was their Dad. I met them when I was twelve, and I travelled with them for three years."

"Best three years of my childhood," Sam assured her. "You know that stupid motel, the one in Creston? It was in my heaven."

"Mine too," Dean chimed in. "Or, more accurately, we share a heaven, and we both found ourselves in that memory."

"I think I should be flattered, but I'm too busy being disturbed by the reminder that you guys have been to heaven. And hell," Emma snarked.

"And purgatory!" Dean added, mock cheerily. "Seriously, though, that David guy? He's your dad? Because I don't think he looked any older than I am."

Ruby came over and set down Henry's hot chocolate, as well as a refill for Emma. Then she handed Dean his beer, while Sam and Emma glared disapprovingly.

"Thanks, baby," Dean said, winking. Ruby grinned and leaned her hip against the table.

"Are you guys in town long?"

"As long as Emma needs us to be," Dean agreed easily. "We travel a lot, so we'll probably visit whenever we get the chance, too."

"That's hot, you know. Guys that take care of their sisters?"

Dean smirked. "I know. So, sweetheart, which fairytale are you from?"

Emma and Sam traded the exact same exasperated look over the table, and it was like none of the past fifteen years had happened. Dean was just generally behaving like a slut, and all was right with the world. "She's Little Red Riding Hood," Henry piped up excitedly.

"So, so far I've met Snow White and Prince Charming, the Evil Queen, Rumplestiltskin, Belle and Little Red? Christ how do you all _know_ each other?"

"And Gabriel," Sam muttered, smacking the back of his head on the booth behind him. "Don't forget Gabriel."

"Gabriel knows everyone," Dean said. "I've made my peace with it and moved on. You know, I'm not even surprised that him and Crowley are friends? It didn't shock me even a little bit. Fu—"

"Dean Winchester, if you swear around my son I will _actually_ castrate you with a pencil," Emma growled.

"Fudge," Dean finished, eyeing her warily. "I would _never_."

"You didn't have any problems teaching twelve-year-old me a whole bunch of new swearwords," Emma pointed out dryly.

"Damn—Darn it, I was _seventeen_, get the hell over it already!"

"Dean, you have been sitting at the same table as Henry for all of five minutes, and you've had to stop yourself from swearing three times," Emma said sternly.

"Didn't you have to watch your mouth around Ben?" Sam asked, amused. "I can't imagine that Lisa would have put up with your vocabulary.

"She stopped caring after awhile," Dean whined. "It only took about a month, then she basically told Ben that she'd ground him for the rest of the school year if he repeated anything that I said at school or near his friends' parents. He swore like a truck driver for about a week, and then the novelty wore off, so he dropped into the occasional f-bomb when he stubbed his toe or something."

Dean fell silent, and Emma watched him curiously. The last time that she'd seen him, he'd mentioned a Lisa and her son Ben that he was trying to build a life with. And perhaps they were still together, in some capacity. But Emma knew that a life built on quicksand, lived in crappy motels and money made by credit card fraud and hustling pool in seedy bars wasn't exactly conductive to a successful long-term relationship, especially in a situation like Lisa Braeden's—the woman had a teenage son and a career—she could not just run off with Dean at the drop of a hat, and Dean was not the sort of person that could stay still for any length of time. Especially with Sam out of hell and active in the game.

Still, though, she didn't want to ask in case it brought up bad memories.

"It's over," Dean supplied, able to read her just as well as he had fifteen years ago. "I'd rather not talk about it, but let's just say that that door is closed for good, and Lisa and Ben are both much better off for it."

"I think you'd make a great dad," Emma shot back. She'd always thought so. Dean was excellent with kids, and it was legitimately really sad that he'd probably never get the chance to have any of his own. Hunters… hunters lived short, violent and brutally bloody lives, lives that were mostly relieved to be over when their time came. It was certainly no life for a child. Not that John Winchester had ever realized that.

"I like to think I was," Dean said. "Ben… Ben might as well have been mine, at least for the time that I was with them. Still, though, part of being a dad is making the hard choices, and Ben is much better off without me."

"I'm sorry."

"So," Henry got that 'I'm much older at heart than I should be, and now I'm going to behave like a middle-aged man' look on his face. "What do you two do for a living?"

Emma and Ruby both suppressed snorts. Sam looked faintly bemused. Dean, though, Dean didn't miss a beat.

"We're hunters," he supplied.

"Hunters," Henry repeated skeptically. "Of like, deer, and stuff?"

Dean leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially. "Of monsters. Monsters and demons and things that go bump in the night."

"But I thought that there weren't monsters in this world?" Henry turned to Emma. "That's why Mr. Gold came here, right?"

Emma snorted. "There are plenty of monsters in this world, Henry, just different ones from the monsters in the Enchanted Forest. And even if they didn't exist, humans are just as capable of being monstrous as monsters are." She had seen lots of them, bounty hunting.

"Don't we know it," Dean said. "That's what demons are, you know. Corrupted human souls, from hundreds of years of torturing others down in the pit. I was almost…"

"I know," Emma said. Nobody could blame Dean for breaking under such circumstances—he was the righteous man. She had done some research when the term had first come up in Carver Edlund's lovely little privacy-invasion of a book series, and eventually come up with a quote from a thirteenth century religious text that summed up both the term 'righteous' as used in religion, and Dean's personality as the man that he'd become. Roughly translated, it stated 'He was a righteous man. Heaven had blessed him with a clarity of vision in matters of good and evil. His judgement was absolute. His compassion was without boundaries, his mercy was divine mercy and his anger was the wrath of God.'

But if Dean had broken in that situation, what hope did anyone else have? He'd lasted thirty years on the rack, the guest of honour of hell's most sadistic torturer. Dean probably knew things about how to cause pain in a person that would make _Regina's_ head spin.

Still, this was not the ideal thing to be discussing around Henry.

"There are demons?" Ruby seemed to be genuinely interested in more than flirting with Dean now, leaning in to look at both brothers curiously.

"Everything that you can imagine and everything that you can't," Dean said. "Did you know that you've had an archangel living in your town?"

"An archangel?" Ruby asked. "Like, from the bible?"

"Yeah. The archangel Gabriel, in fact. Angel of Judgement, Holy Messenger, yada yada yada, all that jazz," Dean said.

"Seriously?" Ruby asked incredulously. "_Gabriel_? _Our_ Gabriel? An _angel_?"

"Well. He skipped out on heaven a couple of millennia ago and became the Norse trickster God," Dean added.

"Loki," Sam elaborated. "He… um, died, while he was helping us stop the apocalypse, and God saved him by suppressing his Grace—that's like an angel's… being, kind of—into his vessel and sending him into your world. Then he got cursed like the rest of you, and when Emma broke it, he got all his memories back and he had his Grace again, too. He's gone to heaven to try to sort out what's going on upstairs—apparently it's been a gong show since Cas absorbed… you don't really care about that," Sam cut himself off.

"I do," Emma protested. "What happened to Dean's angel boyfriend?"

"He's not my boyfriend!" Dean yelped. "We aren't like that, and even if we were inclined to be, he deserves better than me, anyway."

Sam and Emma exchanged a Look. They had built up quite the repertoire of Dean-related Looks over the years, and it was pleasant to tell that none of them had become incomprehensible. This particular Look managed to address Dean's crippling commitment issues, his inadequacy problem, and the continued disassociation of sex vs. intimacy.

"Well that sucks," Ruby muttered.

"What?"

"All the good ones are gay or taken."

"Not gay," Dean returned. "Bi. Or pan. Whatever you want to call it. And _not_ taken!" He added, glaring at Sam and Emma in turn. "He's not my boyfriend!"

"You and baby bro still haven't worked out your shit, huh, Dean-o?" Gabriel appeared out of thin air, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the table, on top of all of the files that had come out of the Impala's trunk.

Ruby yelped. Sam smacked his forehead on the table in frustration. Henry jumped and Dean let out an undisguisable f-bomb.

"Dean!" Emma protested loudly.

"Sorry, kid. Gah, don't _do_ that, Gabriel!"

"I would've figured that you'd be used to it by now. Hey, Red."

"Hey, Gabriel," Ruby muttered sheepishly. "Can I get you anything? Usual?"

"Yeah, thanks."

"Get off the table!" Ruby called as she retreated.

"Dude, you have a _usual_?" Dean jabbed. "And you're on first name terms with the waitress?"

"Everyone in this town has a usual," Gabriel returned. Emma nodded in agreement, because what was that if not the truth? "And everyone knows everyone. It got worse when the curse broke, because now we all remember having two lives and two sets of friends. But everyone knows _her_, pretty much, both as Red and as Ruby. She was one of those people who knew everyone in the Enchanted Forest. Seriously, _everyone_. I don't know how she did it."

"So who were you, in this little town? You didn't remember who you were, did you?"

"I run the sweetshop."

Dean cackled. "Seriously?"

"You think, even brain-wiped, I'd ever do anything else?" Gabriel asked pointedly, snapping his fingers and conjuring a lollipop out of thin air that he stuck in his mouth. Sam rolled his eyes, and Gabriel winked. "See something you like, Sasquatch?"

"Shut up!" Sam snapped.

"Baby," Gabriel simpered.

"Gabriel, there's a kid less than three feet from you," Sam said irritably. "Flirt with me later if you're going to insist."

"Oh, spare me," Dean lamented dramatically.

"Gabriel," Ruby had returned, a violently blue drink in one hand, and bowl of assorted candy in the other. "_Off_ the table, or I'll get Granny."

"Low," Gabriel accused, pouting, as he slid off of the table and pulled up a chair. Then he softened at the sight of the dark-haired girl, looking a bit out of place and clutching the glass so tightly that her knuckles were whitening. "Ruby. Red. You're a lot of things, but you are not a coward, and you aren't one to be intimidated, just because someone more powerful than you turns up."

"But you're an _angel_," Ruby protested shakily, setting his drink down. "In the Enchanted Forest, everyone thought that you were just a magician, like Rumplestiltskin or the fairies, but it turns out that you aren't. In the Enchanted Forest, I wouldn't have understood what an angel was, but now I know what the bible is. How can you even stand to be around us?"

Gabriel rolled to his feet and clutched Ruby's chin in his hand. "You are beautiful. Listen to me, okay? Your _soul_ is beautiful. You're courageous and strong. You believe in yourself and you believe in doing the right thing, and trust me when I say that you've made better choices than I ever have."

Ruby nodded shakily.

"If you just want to think of me as that quirky magician from the Enchanted Forest, then go ahead. Or as the sweetshop owner—I don't care. Or, if you want, you can think of me as an archangel, but remember that archangels aren't as nice as you think they are." He scowled darkly. "Lucifer's an archangel."

"Okay. Okay," Ruby breathed, visibly drawing herself back under control and setting Gabriel's drink down. "Thanks."

"You've always known me, Red. I've never hidden who I am. Now you just understand it better. That's all. Trust me, if I was going to start playing Trickster again—"

"Which you're _not_, because if you do we'll have to shove another wooden stake through your chest," Dean interrupted, smiling charmingly.

"Right. If I did, I'd have the Winchesters, and probably Castiel, on my ass, and I'd rather not do that again. But there might be some people that I'd visit retribution on in this town, were I interested in getting back on that track. Believe me, Red, you would not be one of them."

"What do you mean, retribution?"

"I said that he was a pagan god, right?" Dean asked, still leaning into over the table and into Ruby's space. "He's a trickster. That's what tricksters do—they use very nasty and out-of-proportion pranks to punish people who do bad things. There's usually some element of irony to it."

"Just desserts," Gabriel added happily. "I'm the archangel of justice, of judgement. It's only natural."

"There is nothing _natural_ about killing an abusive bastard with a cartoon Hulk," Sam said flatly. "Or kidnapping a bigoted kid with a UFO and _probing_ him and making him slow dance with aliens. Or arranging for a guy who tested cosmetics on animals to be eaten by a crocodile in the sewers."

"Hey, I liked the slow dancing aliens," Dean said, snorting. "I may not like you, Gabriel, but I'll admit that you've got style."

"Aw," Gabriel pouted outrageously. "You don't like me, whatever will I do?" He leaned forward to look into Dean's eyes. "It's funny, really. You remind me so much of Michael sometimes, but other times… Michael never approved of anything that I did. He didn't even find my antics reluctantly amusing. But then you, Dean Winchester, have proven yourself to be so much better than Michael in so many ways."

"Who's Michael?" Henry piped up, obviously tired of being ignored. Emma had read the books, of course, and she knew exactly who Michael was. But still, it would be interesting to hear how Gabriel described him, after everything that had happened.

"My brother," Gabriel said shortly. "Him and Dean-o here have a _special_ bond."

Sam and Emma snorted at the same time, and Dean made a protesting scoffing noise. "I never said 'yes' to him!" Dean said loudly.

"You were going to," Gabriel stated matter-of-factly. "You would have, to save Adam, except that you didn't have the opportunity. There's a reason that you and Michael are so much alike, Dean. And Sam and Lucifer. And that won't ever go away, even if my brothers are locked in hell forever."

"Shut up." Dean threw himself against the back of the booth to sulk.

"So, what are you guys hunting?"

Dean gestured at the papers, folders and newspapers. "This town appeared out of thin air. Now, obviously, that was because of this curse thing that nobody's told me much about, but whatever was protecting it from outsiders is completely gone."

"It looks that way," Emma added. "Except that nobody who was under the original curse can leave this town without losing their memories of who they are, and permanently reverting back to their cursed persona. Henry and I can obviously leave. I'm not too sure about August, but he can probably leave as well. Regina—well, maybe, but I'm sure she's not too eager to test that theory out. You can leave, but that's because you're an archangel. You're more powerful than the curse, you always have been. Even Gold can't, and he's the one who created it."

"Gold did more than create the curse, sweetheart. He wrote your immunity into its fabric."

"I know," Emma said. "And he remembered who he was, under the curse, so he made himself at least partly immune as well, but it doesn't extend to this. Or at least he doesn't think that it does, and if he doesn't want to take the risk, then who am I to tell him that he should? Oh, that reminds me," she cut herself off and turned to her son.

If Neal was Rumplestiltskin's son and Gold was determined to locate him, chances were that she'd see him again. Henry would find out that Neal was his father, and furthermore, that that cock and bull story about a dead firefighter that she'd fed him was exactly that—cock and bull.

She didn't want to do this. She didn't want to see Neal again. She'd loved him, and he'd betrayed her in the worst possible way, left her alone in the dark and with nobody. She'd never quite stopped loving him, if she was honest with herself. But she didn't have the energy to love him in person again.

Still, it was past time that Henry knew who his father was, and it was past time that she told him the truth about the whole sordid story. Henry deserved to know, even if she didn't want to tell him.

"Henry, I need to tell you something, okay? And you're probably going to be mad at me for it. You have every right to be, but I just ask that you hear me out until the end."

"Okay?" Henry looked rightfully wary.

"When you asked about your father," Emma started, looking up. "I told you that a lot of things. That he was dead, that he was a hero, that I would have married him. The last one is true. The rest were lies."

Henry looked _crushed_. "Um, Em—" Dean started.

"Shut up, Dean," Emma interrupted without looking away from her son. "I didn't want to talk about him because he hurt me. He hurt me a lot. He wasn't a good man, but I loved him and he betrayed me. I didn't think that I was ever going to see him again, so I didn't think that I needed to open that wound again."

"You lied to me!" Henry gasped.

"Yes," Emma said. "I did. At the time I told myself that it was to protect you from the truth, but that was a lie as well. It was to protect me, and I should have been honest with you."

"You're no better than _her_," Henry accused.

"I'm going to kill him," Dean said mildly. "When I get my hands around that little asshole's throat, he is going to die for breaking my sister's heart."

Henry stopped, turned to stare at Emma in surprise. "He hurt you?"

"Yeah, kid. He hurt me a lot."

"Then why are you telling me now? You weren't ever going to tell me, were you?"

"No. I wasn't. I wasn't going to ever open that up again. But I'm telling you because we've made a discovery about your father, something that I didn't know about him before. Something that makes it unlikely that I'll be able to avoid seeing him again, and you should be able to meet your father when you do see him."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, in this world," Emma began. "Your father's name is Neal Cassidy. He never gave me any reason to doubt that, though I'll admit that I couldn't have been sure that it was his real name. However, he wasn't born in this world. And the name that he was born with was Baelfire."

She could see in Henry's eyes the minute the connection clicked in his mind. Of course Rumplestiltskin's story was in his book. "He's Mr. Gold's son."

"Yes. We believe so." She glanced at Gabriel, the herald of this absolutely ridiculous discovery, for confirmation. Gabriel just nodded, smirking. "We have been reliably informed that Baelfire and Neal Cassidy are the same person, so Mr. Gold is now looking for a man named Neal Cassidy, with a nasty criminal record and no real childhood, using his considerable resources."

"A criminal record?" Henry demanded.

"When I met Neal, he was a thief. So was I—that was why I was in jail when I gave birth to you. He had stolen some watches from a jewelry store, and was wanted for them. It was going to make it impossible for us to settle down, and because they knew who he was, he wasn't able to approach the storage locker that he had hidden them in. But I could. I knew that there was a risk to it, but it should have worked out. It would have, if he hadn't turned me in."

"He turned you _in_?" Henry demanded, riveted by the story.

"He called in an anonymous tip, and I was in jail. Alone, and pregnant and eighteen years old. I had no way of contacting my family," she gestured at her brothers across the table.

"I would have come, Emma. If I'd known, you have to know that I would have come," Dean said, eyes painfully earnest. "And Dad would have too."

"I know," Emma said fervently, showing him her gratitude with her eyes alone. "I know that you would've been there. You would have done anything, Dean." It had been so long since she'd been able to trust someone enough to rely on them, but she absolutely trusted Dean. If he'd known about her being in jail, he would've been there in a heartbeat, and he would have gotten her out. Whatever it took.

"I'm sorry he hurt you," Henry said childishly. His tone made it clear that he'd never considered the idea that his father may not have been a good man, that Emma may have been hurt _by_ him, instead of just grieving over his metaphorical death. "But I'm still mad that you lied."

"I know," Emma said. "And you should be, because I shouldn't have. But please try to understand _why_ I did it. Now, in his defence, he _did not_ know that I was pregnant. I never got a chance to tell him, because he was long gone by the time that I noticed the signs and figured it out."

"He still shouldn't have done that to you! Doesn't he know that true love's kiss is the most powerful force in the world?"

Emma, Dean, Sam and Gabriel all snorted loudly at the idea that any of their problems could possibly be fixed by something as trivial as true love.

"Not in this world, Henry," Gabriel said seriously, sounding heavily weighed down. "See, if love is that powerful, then angels should be capable of so much more, shouldn't we? Instead Michael tried to start the apocalypse and Raphael tried to end the world and Lucifer… well maybe, Lucifer is the only one of us who loved like he was supposed to."

"What are you talking about?" Henry demanded.

Gabriel sighed. "There's a reason that I'm not in your little book, kid."

"Why?" Henry demanded, eyeing him eagerly.

"I am the archangel Gabriel. The holy messenger, the angel of justice, and my Father's judgement." The statement would have been intimidating, except that Gabriel's tone was somewhere between bored and embarrassed.

Then there was a cracking sound, all the lights went out except for some eerie backlighting on Gabriel's form, and some seriously long shadows of wings reflected on the bar behind him.

Then the lights came back on, and everyone in Granny's was staring in shock, except for Henry, who just looked excited. "That is totally wicked! I knew that you had to be badass! I just _knew it_."

"Henry, I own a sweetshop," Gabriel observed flatly. "What makes you think that I'm a badass? I'm really not. I'm a scared little kid who ran away from home the second it got hard. I hid behind my powers for millennia, punishing humans for their wrongs. I am the epitome of cowardice." Gabriel paused for a moment, looking conflicted.

"You want badass, talk to the righteous man over here, or the guy who overpowered _Satan_. Talk to your mom, who finally figured out how to fulfil her destiny after going after a dragon with the most badly crafted sword that I have ever seen. Talk to Castiel, who rebelled against heaven for the right reasons, instead of being like me and Lucifer—who left for all the wrong ones. Talk to your grandparents, or hell, Regina. Talk to Belle about fighting for love and having the courage to love someone no matter who they are. Talk to all the ordinary humans who stood up to demons and angels and died for their trouble to stop the apocalypse, just because it was the right thing to do. I'm sure that your uncles aren't even slightly short of acquaintances that could be considered badass, if you want to meet some. All I ever did for this world was get an archangel blade through the chest."

"Feeling guilty, are we?" Dean asked. He surprisingly didn't sound smug at all.

"I could've _tried_, you know? I could've gone home, tried to talk some sense in Mike and Raph, at least. Lucifer was clearly beyond reason, but that didn't mean that Michael was. But no, I ran away until I couldn't any more, and in the end I fought him because you two morons had infected me with your goddamn _caring_."

"You're an archangel, Gabriel," Sam pointed out gently. "We didn't make you see or feel anything. All that we did is remind you of who you are."

"Yeah, thanks so much for that," Gabriel snapped, sarcasm absolutely _dripping _from his tone. "Exactly what I needed."

"Sorry," Dean said, not sounding very sorry.

Dean's phone interrupted them, blaring some Led Zeppelin song, and Dean pulled it out to answer it. He prodded his brother out of his way as he greeted whoever was on the other end, and slid out of the booth to walk away a little.

"So are you guys getting a room?" Emma asked Sam. "I'd ask you to come and stay with us, but we're kind of full. It's only a two-bedroom, and we've got David and Mary Margaret, since David let Kathryn have the house. Plus me and Henry. Henry's already camping in the living room."

"I don't mind," Henry piped up. "I like living with them."

"There have been some awkward moments," Emma elaborated. "Like, scarred for life moments."

"Do you have any idea how many times I've walked in on Dean?" Sam made a bitchy face. "Think about how many times _you_ walked in on him, and then multiply it by one-thousand, because he's that much worse when Dad isn't around to police him. Preaching to the choir."

"Dean isn't your parent, Sam," Emma said dryly.

"Sometimes, I feel like he might as well be," Sam sighed heavily.

"Yeah, I know." And she did. John Winchester had been a good man. He'd been an honorable man who had loved his family very, very much. But the practical side of parenting was not his strong suit. Dean had always taken care of Sam's lunches at school, replacing his supplies and his clothes and shoes, making sure there was edible food in the house. He'd taken Emma under that same wing wordlessly, and there had never been anyone, even Neal, who had so effortlessly made her feel taken-care of. Dean Winchester was a nurturer, plain and simple. He needed to be needed.

"Hey, so _how_ are those people your parents? They can't be any older than any of us?"

"Curse," Gabriel answered, before Emma had to. "Basically, the curse was designed to freeze everyone in time, in a place where all of their happy endings were taken away and they all answered to Regina. Your sister was the prophesized saviour. It was written that on her twenty-eighth birthday, she would come back and save us all, so they smuggled her out of the Enchanted Forest in a magic wardrobe before the curse hit. She then grew up and aged in the real world, while they were frozen in a suspended loop here."

Sam grimaced. "It was written that Dean and I would play along and let your brothers ride us to the apocalypse. Does it look like the world ended?"

"Touché, Sammy. Touché," Gabriel said. "But if my sources are right, you had to jump your ass straight into the pit to stop it from happening."

Sam and Emma both winced, and Gabriel shook his head like he was trying to shake water out of his ear. "Sorry, sorry," he added. "I'm new at this empathy thing, but I've been a human guy with a sweetshop for twenty-eight years. Leaves a mark on a person, which, I figure was Dad's point in the first place."

"What, He was trying to teach you empathy?" Sam asked.

"I've been kind of without it for years. And this way, He times it exactly right so that Mike and Luce are trapped for the foreseeable future, Raph is gone and Castiel has figured out that, good angel that he is, he is not meant to lead heaven. I get back from my punishment and toss Naomi off her bitchy little high horse, and start running the show and fixing everything up after what happened with Mike and Luce and Raph to begin with."

"_Seriously_?" Sam demanded.

"Just a theory. But Dad always did kind of want us to figure shit out for ourselves." Emma considered protesting the cursing, but Henry was hearing it anyway.

"But what about Cas? If he was just… I don't know, collateral damage, then why does God keep bringing him back?"

"Castiel's not collateral damage," Gabriel sounded… amused, almost, at the thought. "He's just not 'Sheriff of Heaven' material. Daddy's got other plans for him."

"Like what?" Sam demanded implacably, arms crossed over his chest.

"Well, just a theory, like I said, but I think that Dad's trying to create a new breed of angel, and I think that Cassie's his test subject."

"_What does that mean_?" Sam wanted to know, a hysterical note in his tone.

"Relax, Sasquatch, I don't think it's _bad_. I don't know if you've noticed, but angels are kind of useless. They don't love humans or earth or each other like they're supposed to, they don't really care about following Him anymore. They can't think for themselves, and if they do you get disasters like Lucifer and I."

"And Cas," Sam pointed out.

"Sammy, you may have noticed that Castiel's feelings for your brother are somewhat… atypical."

Sam snorted.

"And he's been doomed since the second that he touched that gorgeous, glowingly righteous soul in hell. The second that his Grace brushed against it, Castiel was a goner. Why? It wouldn't have happened if Father hadn't allowed it. But Castiel fell in love with a human, and that's never happened before. I mean, I love humans. I _do_. People, all of their messy love and hate and courage and choices. I've never been _in_ love with one, though."

"What about Anna?"

"Anna Milton may have been in love with your brother, or had the potential to be," Gabriel said. "But Anael? She lost the capacity to love him that way as soon as she got her Grace back."

"Okay, so Cas loves Dean. But what does that have to do with a new breed of angel?"

"Love is what gives us the capacity for free will," Gabriel said. "When we break free of the mould of that cold, distant love that we feel for Him, and that we were always taught to feel for humans, it gives us free will. Lucifer loved Father, not like he was supposed to, but like a living, burning thing. I loved Mike and Luce and Raph too much to stay, so that gave me the strength to run. Then I started loving humans, and that gave me the strength to stay gone. Castiel, he is in love with your brother, and he loves you—so he started to fall. And, despite everything being taken away from him, he stood by your side anyway."

"So even though he makes mistakes, God keeps bringing him back," Sam prodded.

"He's a guinea pig," Gabriel filled in. "Father is trying to fix the problems with us—the fact that angels are so dependent on Him that they might as well be extra limbs, or they rebel and try to destroy the earth. There is no in between. Dad wants them to think for themselves without going psycho, and Castiel's his test subject. Dad knew that baby-bro would never try to destroy humanity because he loves Dean so much, but that he'd never blindly follow heaven again for the same reasons."

"He's trying to cut the apron strings," Emma finally realized, somewhat shocked by the fact that they were sitting here having a conversation about God—not as a distant theological concept, but as a father who was trying to raise his children right.

"Exactly," Gabriel answered. "Like I said, though, it's just a theory."

"No, I think you're right," Sam said distantly. "That makes a lot more sense than anything Dean and I have come up with. Not that Dean will take well to you saying that Cas is in love with him, because you know that makes him collapse into a fit of commitment-phobic, low self-esteem driven panic."

**Here's chapter 3 done. I still haven't gotten into actual plot, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy my plotless drivel. I'm going to have to re-watch those episodes that I want to do, and I'm procrastinating that. The real story should start next chapter. Honest. I didn't mean for Gabriel to be in this scene, but suddenly he was there, and the thing was fourteen pages long, so I just decided to publish it. The inspiration for Gabriel's theory comes from a fascinating meta that I read on AO3 a few months ago. I have searched, but been unable to find it again. If you know what I'm talking about, I would really appreciate a link so that I can post it here.**


End file.
